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by taeric 3444 days ago
In addition to this, don't ignore survivor bias. It is amazing how so many things are ignored if they are normalized.

An easy example, right on red. Statistically, this has been shown to be dangerous. Chance of convincing people of this... Pretty much nil.

1 comments

I'm not sure anyone would dispute that there's some incremental danger to allowing right turn on red. After all, it wasn't the norm for a long time in the US. (It became widespread in the 1970s as a fuel-saving measure.)

Similarly, we'd certainly be safer with lower speed limits.

But we collectively make tradeoffs which may even be informed by some level of data.

To that end, I agree that rhetoric that many "bargain" and "thrown together" bikes are "death traps" does little to help the conversation.

That is, I would expect that quality bikes are safer. I still expect many did just fine on them. (Myself included.)