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Cycling Science (@CyclingScience1)
09/10/2012 17:57
Best way for children to get to school? Cycling makes them 13% fitter than car-riding and 20% fitter than walking http://ow.ly/ediR1
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CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Questions/Support/Help
My child's safety...
(73 posts)- Started 11 years ago by Roibeard
- Latest reply from Min
- This topic is
not a support question
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Posted 11 years ago #
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Seems counter-intuitive. Maybe it's poorly written or they're comparing cyclists at completion with cyclists at baseline (and other modes) without taking account of shifts in mode use. Otherwise its hard to account for greater gains compared with walking than compared with car-riding. You'd expect the opposite.
Posted 11 years ago # -
It does seem counter-intuitive. Maybe it is something to do with the choice of fitness test which is erm, a bike test.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I presume the bike test is on one of those 'lab rat' bikes you get in fitness centres? With O2/CO2 monitors, pulse meters, etc.
Maybe the walkers were just strolling a few hundred yards, but the cyclists travelled a few miles?
Without the data, we can't tell.
What I think they are saying though is that although walking may keep you fit, cycling increases your fitness more over a longer period.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I used to walk 4.5 miles a day, but I didn't get fit in the gymbunny sense - just able to plod onwards indefinitely.
Nowadays, I suspect I'd be suffering after a few hours stroll on foot.
A more specific beast than most realise, I declare fitness to be.
As crow says, we'd really need to see the school to figure out the numbers. Might be right beside a sink estate with pricier housing all around, in which case if there's the same correlation between parent income and child exercise as in the UK, then that's a big chunksome variable.
Posted 11 years ago # -
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Sven Rufus (@SvenRufus)09/10/2012 22:58
@CyclingScience1 Not getting that - does that mean that car riding gets you fitter than walking?"
Posted 11 years ago # -
Maybe someone should point The Edinburgh Reporter at this. You know - "School wins cycle friendly award but child can't actually cycle to school without hassle" type headline (I don't think I'm cut out to be a journalist...)
Posted 11 years ago # -
Re. the 13% vs. 20% improvement mentioned above. Looking at the numbers in the paper I wouldn't read anything into the difference between these two numbers (because there is a big variation within each group, and they have to account for other factors such as height, maturity and socio-economic factors).
Posted 11 years ago # -
Sorry, I'm not forking out $31.50 just to find out what their data sets look like.
Posted 11 years ago # -
re walking v cycling fitness
My daily commute used to be by foot, and now is by bike - however moving to cycling caused me to put on weight in the form of muscle.
I can only presume that I exert myself more on the bike than I ever did walking, although now the matter is confounded by cycling places I wouldn't have walked!
I can easily believe that cycling is more energy efficient than walking (per mile), but I suspect that under real world conditions cyclists just travel faster or further. Or at least this one does!
Robert
Posted 11 years ago # -
As crow says, we'd really need to see the school to figure out the numbers. Might be right beside a sink estate with pricier housing all around, in which case if there's the same correlation between parent income and child exercise as in the UK, then that's a big chunksome variable.
Do they even have 'sink estates' in Sweden? I'm not convinced they do.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I do confess I didn't bother to do any research there, so they could indeed be a non-Swedish phenomenon.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Most people don't walk, they dawdle. Put some effort into walking and you find that you overtake everyone else.
School children are the worst at dawdling.Posted 11 years ago # -
The paper doesn't mention how far the children are walking or cycling. One of the odd things it DOES mention is that for teenagers, walking rates decrease and cycling rates increase as they get older and the main reason given for this is that cycling is perceived as safer.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Most people don't walk, they dawdle. Put some effort into walking and you find that you overtake everyone else.
Yes, I've always been a fast walker. Used to like hill walking as a teenager too. It's true that if you walk a bit faster, you are exercising quite well.
School children are the worst at dawdling.
Not my son! He's started walking to primary school on his own and he runs all the way (except when crossing roads).
cycling is perceived as safer.
Easier to outpace the bullies?
Posted 11 years ago # -
Posted 11 years ago #
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So, in short, "dunno".
Posted 11 years ago # -
"
Multi-level examination of correlates of active transportation to school among youth living within 1 mile of their school
"Posted 11 years ago # -
This morning, I got pulled over by L&BP.
I'd pulled into the ASZ in front of them with my daughter, on the assumption that the best driver to have behind you would be the police.
Yet we still got hoots (no idea if it was them!), and they followed us into the school and "had a word".
My word was "no", when they advised us to adopt what amounted to a secondary, single-file position. They also told us we were holding up traffic, missing the fact completely that we were traffic!
So the last stretch takes us <60 secs (~10 mph). At 30 mph it would take 20 secs (ignoring the 20mph zone, naturally). So it would appear that, in the opinion of at least one officer, cyclists delaying "traffic" for 40 seconds requires intervention.
Needless to say, their collar numbers are winging their way to professionalstandards@lbp.pnn.police.uk
It's enough to make one militant...
Robert
Posted 11 years ago # -
Oh. Good. Grief.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Scum.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I'm inclined to agree.
I'm also inclined to wonder what the road layout by MiniRoibeard's school is like, and whether L&BP's finest would have reacted the same way at another location.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Morons, glad you had the presence to get their collar numbers. The one unnecessary incident I had with the police, I was accused of giving the guy a "dirty look", I forgot to get his id...
Posted 11 years ago # -
I would have been exceptionally angry in your position, Roibeard, and probably have said something in the heat of the moment that would have been regretted later. So my commendations on keeping it cool and civil and taking the relevant details to make a complaint.
It's annoying when the Police won't enforce laws, and (in my personal opinion) scandalous when senior officers come out in public to say they wont (I'm thinking 20mph zones). But inventing whole new laws of their own to enforce is just taking the biscuit.
I do hope it's just an isolated incident.
Posted 11 years ago # -
It just shows how much against it we really are since the police seem happy enough to hang about on the Roseburn enforcing some arbitrary "speed limit" which doesn't even exist. How typical that they then go on to enforce non-existant speed minimums on cyclists on the road.
The only important thing is Traffic Flow and they are probably very quick at scraping bodies off the road to restore Traffic Flow ASAP since they get so much practise at it.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Of course anyone who has seen cycle police will have noticed how glacially slowly they move, and always two abreast of course, down the middle of the road. Okay for them to "hold up traffic".
It makes me so angry.
(can you tell?)
Posted 11 years ago # -
Roibeard - your "crime" wasn't holding up the traffic. It was holding up the polis - no doubt on their way to pursue some urgent inquiries in Greggs.
Very well done on maintaining such a cool head.
Posted 11 years ago # -
@Min - the mounties ride two abreast too, and not even at a canter...
We'll see what comes of the complaint. My prediction is nothing, or a reiteration that single file is appropriate.
I concluded the complaint with an offer to let them cycle the school run for a week to see for themselves the safest approach - in plains clothes!
That might avoid the +2 bubble of better behaviour with which their uniforms appear blessed...
Robert
Posted 11 years ago # -
As others have said, congrats on remaining calm.
Two uneducated Policemen doesn't mean they're all bad though anymore than two rlj'ing cyclists means we all do it! Hopefully a sensible complaint will result in a bit of education in primary and secondary positioning.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Dingbats. If they were observing the ASZ and staying behind it they ought not to be surprised or complain when someone ends up using it.
Posted 11 years ago #
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