Are these tow trailers really safe in the dark?

[amigafan2003]

Amigafan....in answer to your question....bus maybe ?

@ £10 per journey? No thanks.

 

[flecc]

It is indeed the age-old problem of debates like this often ignoring the true risk and using emotively-expressed variations on perceived risk to make a point.

In many respects it's no different to the irrational view many have of other risks. For example, one of the most dangerous activities young people and children can do is ride horses and ponies. The death and injury risk is on a par with riding a motorcycle on the roads, I believe. Yet thousands of parents up and down the land encourage their children to indulge in this activity, and at the same time would condemn riding a motorcycle as being far too dangerous.

Logic doesn't come into it, I'm afraid.

How very true.

A similar argument I've regularly advanced is on the subject of swimming. Around 500 and as many as 1000 people are drowned in UK waters every year, the great majority of them being swimmers, often the reason they were in the water in the first place.

That's more than the number of pedestrian deaths on the roads.

The government campaigns vigorously to reduce pedestrian deaths, yet actively encourages people to learn to swim, ensuring a next generation of swimming fatalities.

There really is no logic present.
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[Scimitar]

To each their own, but promise me, when out cycling with your children, you will keep more of a look out for traffic than admiring your wifes a***

Lynda

It's unusual to find anyone with an apse these days.

 

[john h]

for many years i have used a trailer on my bike for cycle camping, i have two rows of 5 leds flashing on the trailer; and two poles one at each side at the rear with flashing leds on them, might seem a bit much but i do get seen.[ long may it be so] the back roads off perthshire NCR77 are great for a cycle ride but the A9 no chance,even in the car .

 

[SRS]

How very true.

A similar argument I've regularly advanced is on the subject of swimming. Around 500 and as many as 1000 people are drowned in UK waters every year, the great majority of them being swimmers, often the reason they were in the water in the first place.

That's more than the number of pedestrian deaths on the roads.

The government campaigns vigorously to reduce pedestrian deaths, yet actively encourages people to learn to swim, ensuring a next generation of swimming fatalities.

There really is no logic present.
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Flecc

What a lot of tosh. Lets discourage people from swimming, just in case they might drown. I have never heard anything so ridiculous!!

Sticking my 4 year old daughter in a low level trailer in stinking polluting traffic is not an acceptable way to treat her.

Risk or no risk, I'll not treat her this way.

We'll use our trailer on the local cycle ways only, one of which takes us directly to our local swimming pool.

 

[flecc]

Flecc

What a lot of tosh. Lets discourage people from swimming, just in case they might drown. I have never heard anything so ridiculous!!

I said nothing of the sort, please don't quote what I didn't say.

I merely drew attention to an illogicality in the way government acts on pedestrian road deaths and swimming deaths. Facts are not tosh.

 

[SRS]

I said nothing of the sort, please don't quote what I didn't say.

I merely drew attention to an illogicality in the way government acts on pedestrian road deaths and swimming deaths. Facts are not tosh.

actively encourages people to learn to swim, ensuring a next generation of swimming fatalities

As I said Tosh. They do not actively encourage swimmming to ensure future swimming fatalities.

 

[flecc]

actively encourages people to learn to swim, ensuring a next generation of swimming fatalities

As I said Tosh. They do not actively encourage swimmming to ensure future swimming fatalities.

You've just done it again, adding "to" and omitting the comma to change the meaning. Please stick to what I posted. In addition, your alteration still does not mean I've posted about discouraging people from swimming as you said in this post. Your word not mine, of course they will swim.

Mine was a post about logic, to which you've twice responded with tosh.

 

[funkylyn]

Im not sure about the logic here though flecc, as it certainly isnt wrong to encourage people to swim and certainly isnt wrong to campaign against pedestrian road deaths Im not quite sure what you are meaning by pointing out that the government is being illogical......they are,after all, just trying to help....

What would you prefer them to do ?

Lynda

 

[flecc]

Trying to help no doubt Lynda, but not logically in the comparison I made. Presumably they are wanting to save lives, so to do that they rightly try to reduce pedestrian deaths. Unfortunately they also try to promote an activity which results in well over twice the death rate of being a pedestrian.

Not very rational is it? Of course people will swim, but knowing it's death rate they would be well advised not to promote it, with the end result of even more deaths than if they did nothing.

That's against their own objective of saving lives.
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[Jeremy]

Seems people are misreading (perhaps deliberately) the point flecc was making.

I read his comment about swimming as just an example of the way we misunderstand causality. It's a human trait, making connections between, often unrelated, events and attributing cause to effect incorrectly.

It even happens in major accident investigations, with serious consequences in terms of determining the true cause and instigating corrective action that will be effective. An acquaintance of mine has developed a powerful methodology for separating the emotional "cause" from the true cause, by carefully analysing every possible event that can have contributed to an accident and determining whether the event was in the causal chain, and if so to what degree it contributed to the outcome. It's surprising how often the obvious "cause" turns out to have had little or nothing to do with the outcome.

Unfortunately, we have a mass of safety legislation that has been passed without having first been subject to this kind of careful scrutiny, often as a consequence of politicians feeling they need to respond to outcries from the popular press.

 

[Old_Dave]

I'm sure we would agree that learning to swim (just in case one is ever dumped unintentionally into the water) has to be a good thing)

At our local swimming baths several peeps have had to be 'rescued' by the life guards, but unfortunately on more than one occasion they were not diligent enough and the worse case reared its ugly head.... I'm unsure at the moment as to why the swimmers got into difficulties but will ask asap.

 

[funkylyn]

Trying to help no doubt Lynda, but not logically in the comparison I made. Presumably they are wanting to save lives, so to do that they rightly try to reduce pedestrian deaths. Unfortunately they also try to promote an activity which results in well over twice the death rate of being a pedestrian.

Not very rational is it? Of course people will swim, but knowing it's death rate they would be well advised not to promote it, with the end result of even more deaths than if they did nothing.

That's against their own objective of saving lives.
.

But surely you can accept flecc, that teaching people to swim doesnt necessarily mean that they HAVE to swim, but if suddenly, by some fluke, they find themselves in the water, at least they would hopefully be able to save themselves......so, in that scenario, not so illogical, irrational and against the governments objective of saving lives surely ?

Lynda

 

[flecc]

I'm sure we would agree that learning to swim (just in case one is ever dumped unintentionally into the water) has to be a good thing)

Of course Dave, my post was not about whether people learn to swim, just about the logicality of a government action.

Our government rightly has a general objective of saving people from avoidable deaths, doing that in many ways such as welfare, the NHS, road safety action, industrial accident reduction, policing etc. Undoubtedly that saves many lives. To at the same time promote something which increases deaths is illogical, however desirable it may be in other respects.

Lifeguards saving people in a swimming pool is a red herring of course, swimmers only get into that trouble because they are swimming, non-swimmers don't need lifeguards in swimming pools!

 

[amigafan2003]

I still think you've missed Fleccs point.

Teaching people to swim then encourages them to participate in a risky activity - an activity that has a high rate of accidents. Swimmers think the risk has been removed by them having learned how to swim.

Again I've lost the numbers, but the frequency of deaths by drowning of non swimmers is actually very small - so small as to be discounted. It's something like 98% of all deaths by drowning are those who can actually swim.

An analogy - I skydive and I know how to pack and open a parachute. I would be foolish however to think that knowing how to do the above automatically makes sky diving a risk free activity. However, if I didn't know how to open a parachute I certainly wouldn't jump out of a perfectly good aeroplane!

It's the same with non-swimmers - they simply don't get into/onto the water in the first place, thereby almost entirely eliminating the risk of drowning.

 

[Old_Dave]

non-swimmers don't need lifeguards in swimming pools

Love it

 

[flecc]

But surely you can accept flecc, that teaching people to swim doesnt necessarily mean that they HAVE to swim, but if suddenly, by some fluke, they find themselves in the water, at least they would hopefully be able to save themselves......so, in that scenario, not so illogical, irrational and against the governments objective of saving lives surely ?

Lynda

As you see from my reply to Dave above, Lynda, it's not about swimming or it's benefits. It's about the logic of government trying to save lives and yet increasing the death rate at the same time, undoing their own work.

However, if it's swimming you want to discuss instead of logic:

A swimmer almost never saves the life of a non-swimmer. Occasionally they save a swimmer, though all too often they also drown in the attempt.

It's a simple fact that if nobody swam, hundreds of annual UK deaths would be avoided. Swimming is very much more dangerous than being a pedestrian. Almost everyone is a pedestrian while only a small proportion of the population swim in each year, but both have a similar total of deaths.

I've no problem with people wanting to swim, but no-one including government should claim it saves lives. The proven net effect is that it takes them.
.

 

[Jeremy]

There's an interesting, if slightly pointless, extension to this principle. If you wanted to be as safe as possible, then you should be encouraged to read the RoSPA statistics and actively avoid any activity listed. This way you would remove the majority of risks we are all exposed to.

Mind you, you'd probably starve or freeze to death, because many of the risks listed are actually essential to life................

 

[funkylyn]

You are still missing the point I am trying to make flecc

Someone learns to swim
They dont ever swim afterwards
One day they accidentally fall in the water
The fact that they can swim saves their life
Good result surely ?

Im not sure of the facts and figures regarding numbers of deaths from swimming/walking/driving/skydiving/cycling/ et al

........but I do think we are bordering on being just a little bit pedantic here

Lynda

 

[flecc]

I understand that point very well Lynda, but how often will that happen. I could just as easily say "What if they bang their head when falling in, so are unconcious and still drown?". The "what if" game can be played for ever. The fact is that swimming costs many lives, it's a quite dangerous pursuit.

But once again, my original post was about the illogicality of a government doing opposing things. That's the subject of my post, consistency of actions, not what the actions are.

Of course the thread subject is:

Are these tow trailers really safe in the dark.
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