This under taking thing .....

[Rhythm Thief]

It was Forester - Franklin is canny enough not to litter his texts with pseudo stats.

Sorry, my mistake ... I've just been reading a history of Polar exploration and must have been thinking of the doomed explorer John Franklin.

 

[jimboalee]

On the subject of cycle training, I thought that was what high school metalwork teachers are for...

 

[Origamist]

I think there's no point in picking on obvious typos. I've nearly typed Franklin a couple of times when I meant Forester, or misspelt it.

Note to self: don't be so exacting - these guys have the same initials after all!

 

[Greenbank]

My choice of phrasing to Greenbank was to try and indicate that he obviously feels safe enough to carry on cycling and therefore has learnt enough to do so.

But my perception of safety has changed over the years too.

I felt I'd learnt enough to feel safe to cycle after probably a couple of hundred miles, which I was I was happy to cycle on the roads with that little experience.

Now, with much more experience, I know that back then I was increadibly naive and wouldn't have considered myself to be "safe" with that little experience, based on what I know now.

In a couple of years I may look back at what I knew now and wondered how I'd ever considered myself to be safe, maybe not, who knows.

This is the one of the main points being made by having such big differences (orders of magnitude) between the different learning techniques. As a crap analogy; it's much much easier to learn about calculus from a teacher or a book but would take significant time for you to discover it all on your own working from first principles.

 

[Greenbank]

Also, on the subject of what is being defined as "traffic safe cycling" (not "safe enough to be happy cycling on the road"), 800 miles of "Effective Cycling Instruction" is not a couple of 2 hour sessions.

 

[Downward]

It's a wonder anyone actually cycles in traffic spouting all the crap about cycle training.
Jeez even if someone has had x amount of hours proper training this won't mean jack shoot if your hit by a car through no fault of your own.

 

[Greenbank]

If you want to avoid *ALL* risk in activity X then the only way to do that is to not do activity X.

I know cycling isn't risk free, no-one is claiming it is.

The rest is identifying the risks and working out what you can do to mitigate them where practical. There are some where it is impossible to remove the risk completely, but you can usually do something to reduce the risk to an acceptable level. There are also things you can do to completely eradicate a risk but are utterly impractical to do.

To generalise:-

a) The less experience you have the less aware of all of the risks you tend to be.
There's a middle ground where you think you know it all which leads to complacency, and usually a scare, which leads to...
c) Becoming more and more aware of what can go wrong and how to avoid it in the first place. This being a never-ending search for enlightenment.

You can speed it up by having many of the risks demonstrated to you, listed in a book, or you can slowly find them out for yourself (hopefully without you being on the receiving end of it).

 

[Rhythm Thief]

a) The less experience you have the less aware of all of the risks you tend to be.
There's a middle ground where you think you know it all which leads to complacency, and usually a scare, which leads to...
c) Becoming more and more aware of what can go wrong and how to avoid it in the first place. This being a never-ending search for enlightenment.

You can speed it up by having many of the risks demonstrated to you, listed in a book, or you can slowly find them out for yourself (hopefully without you being on the receiving end of it).

But, as with everything which is speeded up, there's a trade off. You're much less likely to forget something you've learned by experience than you are to forget something you heard in one of a course of five cycling lessons.

 

[BentMikey]

But, as with everything which is speeded up, there's a trade off. You're much less likely to forget something you've learned by experience than you are to forget something you heard in one of a course of five cycling lessons.

The flaw in your argument is that Bikeability involves getting people to actually do the stuff they are being taught. For example, it's not a successful outcome unless it involves interaction with other traffic in the way the specific lesson is aimed at teaching. There's your experience.

 

[BentMikey]

It's a wonder anyone actually cycles in traffic spouting all the crap about cycle training.
Jeez even if someone has had x amount of hours proper training this won't mean jack shoot if your hit by a car through no fault of your own.

I think we all realise that something like only 1 in 10 bike/motor vehicle collisions are the fault of the cyclist. Nevertheless, a great deal of risk can be avoided through good defensive cycling. Correcting for drivers' mistakes, if you will.

 

[Rhythm Thief]

I think we all realise that something like only 1 in 10 bike/motor vehicle collisions are the fault of the cyclist. Nevertheless, a great deal of risk can be avoided through good defensive cycling. Correcting for drivers' mistakes, if you will.

While the point you make about Bikeability in your previous post is a good one, I don't believe that "good defensive cycling" can be learned by lessons, no matter how good those lessons are and how much they're taught in real traffic. You can point people in the right direction, certainly, but that's all. As an example, I (supposedly) learnt to reverse an articulated lorry during my HGV lessons, but the first six months of my driving career were spent learning to do it properly until it became second nature. Now I've got ten years' experience under my belt, I don't think I'll ever forget it - in fact, I now struggle to reverse non-artics! - but if I'd stopped after my lessons and test, it would have been forgotten long ago.
Lessons certainly have a place, but they're a precursor to experience, not a substitute.

 

[jimboalee]

It's a wonder anyone actually cycles in traffic spouting all the crap about cycle training.
Jeez even if someone has had x amount of hours proper training this won't mean jack shoot if your hit by a car through no fault of your own.

That is correct.

Jimbo's 'Cyclecraft'...

1/ Read, understand and obey the Highway code of the country you are cycling in.

2/ Use lamps and wear bright clothing so the buggers can see you.

3/ Ride where it is LEAST likely the buggers will hit you.


If you are still concerned one of the buggers will hit you, take the bike back for a refund.

 

[BentMikey]

I don't think anyone would argue with that RT! That's pretty standard for all parts of life and learning.

I was simply saying that you get to do stuff in the lessons in real traffic, so a little actual experience. That was to counter your earlier point that you wouldn't learn something very well without it having happened to you.

 

[jimboalee]

Luckily, I have never needed to effect a J turn or Handbrake turn, four wheel drift or opposite lock in real traffic.

The lessons were at MIRA and I keep in practice by taking the Jags on Gaydon's test track.


On a pushbike, I have never needed to do a wheelstand turn, front wheel pirouette or riding backwards in 'real traffic', but I do trackstands regularly.

Of these, only the trackstand was learned through instruction.

I tell a lie. I rolled backward on a short steep hill in Warwick earlier this year when a motorist cut me up. It's a good trick to learn as you don't have to unclip on a hill, you just hold the bike on it's brakes and effect a rearward rolling trackstand until you are clear of trouble.

 

[summerdays]

That is correct.

Jimbo's 'Cyclecraft'...

1/ Read, understand and obey the Highway code of the country you are cycling in.

2/ Use lamps and wear bright clothing so the buggers can see you.

3/ Ride where it is LEAST likely the buggers will hit you.


If you are still concerned one of the buggers will hit you, take the bike back for a refund.

Couldn't that be interpreted as ride on the pavement (though it would be no guarantee that you wouldn't get hit by a car). Or even if you were riding on the road - you could look at that statement and think the gutter was the safest place.