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Archive for February 18th, 2009

Bad Cycling? Bad Science

Here is what insurance company LV has to say about cycling safety in the U.K.:

“Mounting financial pressures have led to a surge in inexperienced cyclists taking to the roads,” say LV in their press release: “resulting in a 29% increase in road accidents involving cyclists in the past six months.”

This from a press release titled: “ROAD USERS WARNED OVER INEXPERIENCED CYCLISTS.” Road users aren’t the same as cyclists, inexperienced or not?

And here’s what Bad Science author Ben Goldacre says: “It’s topical, it involves death and fear, it’s dressed in the cloak of statistical authority: this is totally going on the telly.”

Read his full dissection here. The problems seem legion; for beginners, we don’t know that the cyclists hit are indeed the novel cyclists. These sorts of insurance-company led “studies” come up all the time in the media, and I’m not sure whether they’re done as PR stunts (I love that phrase “PR-reviewed scientific evidence”) for a willing media, or to scare us all into buying more insurance (or maybe getting us off the bike and into a car). There are real issues here, but head-line chasing does no one a service.

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Posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 3:18 pm by: Tom Vanderbilt
3 Comments. Click here to leave a comment.

And You Thought Driving Tests Were Stressful for the Students

The BBC reports that a driving instructor is suing for damages over a driving test.

Mr Carmichael said he recorded 14 faults with the driving of the woman taking the exam, claiming five were serious and one dangerous.

He’s suing the insurer of the exam car, not the would-be student (who, uh, failed).

Ms Tait asked Mr Carmichael, a former driving instructor, if he was seriously telling the court that this incident, if it occurred as he said, was the worst he had experienced in over 12 years of having learner drivers at the wheel.

He said: “Yes it was.”

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Posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 9:32 am by: Tom Vanderbilt
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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

Please send tips, news, research papers, links, photos (bad road signs, outrageous bumper stickers, spectacularly awful acts of driving or parking or anything traffic-related), or ideas for my Slate.com Transport column to me at: info@howwedrive.com.

For publicity inquiries, please contact Kate Runde at Vintage: krunde@randomhouse.com.

For editorial inquiries, please contact Zoe Pagnamenta at The Zoe Pagnamenta Agency: zoe@zpagency.com.

For speaking engagement inquiries, please contact
Jenna Meulemans at the Knopf Speaker Bureau.

Order Traffic from:

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Drive-on-the-left types can order the book from Amazon.co.uk.

For UK publicity enquiries please contact Rosie Glaisher at Penguin.

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