Posts Tagged bicycle

De Tour van Bauke: English subs

Oct 10, 2013 at 21:18 · Filed under Cycling ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

If you’re into bicycle racing, you might enjoy the “De Tour van Bauke” (“Bauke’s Tour”), a behind the scenes look at Team Belkin’s 2013 Tour de France campaign, by Kees Jongkind of the dutch NOS public service broadcaster.

It has a few fascinating insights, such as into the echelon stage where Saxo, OPQS and Belkin managed to split the field; managing egos within a team with several top riders; and generally some of the dynamics within a top WorldTour team. The film doesn’t spend much time on explaining the background, and does sort of assume you’re fairly familiar with how the TdF ’13 played out, and perhaps how the team had had to scramble over the winter before to find a new sponsor after Rabobank pulled out, succeeding in finding Belkin as title sponsor. If those assumptions are met, the documentary is very enjoyable.

I obviously can’t remove the original dutch sub-titles that are embedded in the video. So I’ve had to position the sub titles above, which means I’ve had to use the “Alpha Sub-Station” format, rather than the more common SRT format, as SRT does not support positioning. Ideally, NOS would prepare an English subtitle version, with the subtitles professionally rendered. I did contact someone at NOS to see if they’d be interested – they apparently have their own plans for further releases to non-Netherlands markets, but I didn’t get any specifics. I’d be more than glad to licence the subs back to NOS for web use for free, to say thanks for making “De Tour van Bauke” available on the web.

As some of the Belkin DSes have strong regional accents, I’ve sometimes used regional english words. E.g. in my mind, the english subtitles for Nico should be read with a strong Irish accent – think Sean Kelly 🙂 crossed with Mrs Doyle from Father Ted (“Go on, go on..”). I’ve also snuck in one or two Liggettisms for the TV commentary subtitles!

In order to use these subtitles you need a video player that supports “Alpha Sub-Station” format subtitles, such as VLC 

To watch it with VLC:

  1. Download the documentary from NOS. You have to save one of the following links to your computer, so you can watch it in VLC – watching in your browser probably wont work:
  2. Rename the downloaded video file to, e.g., tour_van_bauke.mp4
  3. Download the subtitles file from OpenSubtitles, and save it as, e.g., tour_van_bauke.ass to the same folder as the video.
  4. Open the video in VLC.

VLC should then automatically play the sub-titles. If it doesn’t go to the “Video” menu, then “Subtitles track”, then choose “Open file…” and manually locate and open the sub-titles file.

Feedback/corrections would be appreciated!

Enjoy.

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Does Cycling Scotland promote cycling as dangerous?

Jun 20, 2012 at 11:39 · Filed under Cycling ·Tagged , , , ,

Letter to cycling I sent to Cycling Scotland via their website recently, after noticing how many of the images there “dangerise” cycling. I wonder if their efforts, however well-intentioned, may actually be counter-productive.

Hi,

In your “About Us” you state a number of goals for your organisation, including goal 4:

“Show that cycling is a safe, effective and economical transport option that’s better for the people of Scotland, and for their environment“

Every picture on your website appears to show cyclists wearing safety equipment. The section on “bikeability” training – targeted at children – has pictures of children in hi-viz vests along with helmets. Further, though I have not yet looked at your training materials, I assume from the visual message on your website that you also strongly promote safety equipment to any potential cyclists or parents.

I am curious how you reconcile goal 4 with the message you seem to have deliberately created that cycling is so dangerous that it requires safety equipment? A message which is course not grounded in reality, as cycling is little more dangerous than other normal, daily activities such as walking beside the road.

I note that in the Netherlands, which has the best cycling safety in the western world along with the highest cycling rates, there is almost no use of safety equipment. Thus, it is an undeniable fact that helmets and hi-viz are not a pre-requisite for safe cycling. Are you perhaps working against real safe cycling by helping promulgate a false sense of cycling danger, and thus perhaps turning off more people from cycling than you encourage?

regards,

Paul Jakma

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Most of your body is not protected by a bicycle helmet

Jun 20, 2012 at 11:26 · Filed under Cycling ·Tagged , , , , , ,

This was a comment on http://www.emsexploration.com/wordpress/this-helmet-saved-my-life-an-employee-spotlight/, but they never published it and then closed comments.

First off, I’m really sorry to hear you had such a terrible accident, and I’m very glad to hear you’ve managed to recover from it. Please don’t misunderstand me on that, in what I’m about to write.

I have to say, it sounds like you suffered quite a number of very serious and potentially life-changing, even life-threatening, injuries across your body – the spinal injury in particular. The recovery time and process for several of these injuries would have made quite an impact on your life. The important thing to note is these are injuries for which a helmet gives no protection. To think that the major lesson to take away from your accident is “wear a helmet” is, I’m sorry, dangerous. The real lesson is:

“Helmets are not magic and will not protect you from major injury, even death, generally. If you want to be safe, slow down!”

Indeed, it is actually possible that the helmet contributed to your accident and hence your injuries, by making you over-confident and taking more risks on a fast downhill descent than you might have if not wearing helmet . A well-known effect, called “risk compensation” or “risk homœostasis“.

I often don’t wear a helmet. I’ve had other cyclists comment on this, and question why I dare to take such a risk. Then I see these same cyclists fly past on downhill descents, barrelling through corners and taking far more risk than I would. They are surely far more likely to have an accident because of this, and their skin, limbs, torso, major organs and face are no more protected than mine are! Further, there is clear evidence that helmets, while helping protect the cranium (but to a lesser extent than is often thought), increase other injuries. Particularly neck and facial injuries.

So, again, I am baffled that the life lesson you drew from your accident was that helmets are uber-important. The real lesson surely should be “Slow down! Take less risk!“. In the unfortunate event of a crash, the lower the speed, the better the outcome!

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Study shows Australian cyclist helmet law leads to increasing head injury rates

Jun 23, 2011 at 18:21 · Filed under Cycling ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

This is an edited version of a comment I made elsewhere.

A new study has been published recently on the impact on head injury rates of cyclists by the compulsory helmet laws in New South Wales, Australia. This claims there’s a positive effect on injury rates from such helmet laws, even adjusting for the reported fall in cycling rates due to the introduction of the law. This is being reported by some as evidence that compulsory helmet laws work or even that they lead to a 29% drop in head injuries. However, that seems a misleadingly simplistic view of it.

A careful look at the study  shows there appears to be a significant benefit only over a short-period of time, across the few months where the law is passed. While beyond that the helmet law has managed to turn a decreasing head injury rate into an increasing head injury rate (fig 3). This is despite accident rates themselves being somewhat stable (fig 2). Within a year and a half of the law coming in, the head injury rate is almost back to the same level as before! Given the increasing trend, it is likely that not long after the study period head injury rates would have been worse than before!

So what is happening? There is a divergence between the arm injury rate and the leg rate in fig 3. The arm injury rate has increased, mirroring the head injury rate, while the leg rate stays flat – possibly reflecting the stable-ish overall accident rate. This suggests the nature of accidents may have changed.

The study itself notes there are some possible limitations to its findings:

  • Injury rates are seasonal, and they have only very limited amount of data (less than a year) on the pre-law rates.
  • They assumed exposure to potential injuries was identical for head, leg and arms. While this seems a reasonable assumption, as they say, their own data shows this assumption may not be entirely safe.
  •  They have no data on cyclist types or behaviour, so they can’t factor out things like proportionally more cyclists in riskier environments having given up, or cycling in safer environments having increased (e.g. commuter v recreational cycling).

One possibility is risk compensation, that the extra perception of safety from the wearing of helmets leads to drivers and/or cyclists taking on more risks. E.g. a study on the behaviour of motorists when passing cyclists  has shown that motorists pass closer if the cyclist is wearing a helmet. Another possibility is that injury rates just happened co-incidentally to be at a high prior to the law, and that the law has had little causal effect. Further, the very proposal of the law no doubt lead to a lot of media exposure of the issues around cycle safety. That media exposure no doubt had a strong impact on awareness, even prior to the law’s passing – awareness which faded in time after it was all done and dusted. Or some combination thereof.

That means, so far as the study is accurate, that beyond a short-period, the study actually shows an apparent detrimental impact on safety in terms of head injury rates, and only a transient impact on head injury ratios relative to arm and leg injury rates (the metric they relied on to normalise out changes in cycle use).

Wearing a helmet may well protect your head from serious injury if you get into an accident, the problem is that in wearing one, it you may also be more likely to get into an accident and that accident may even be more serious. Which of those is better is a hard question, but it should probably be an individual choice. Interestingly, some of the safest countries for cycling have very low rates of cycle helmet use – almost no-one wears them in the Netherlands, except for serious sports cyclists.

Update: dg01d linked me to this interesting discussion on cycle helmet safety in the BMJ. Also fine-tuned the language in the conclusion on the possible trade-offs in risk.

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