eLetters

172 e-Letters

  • IMPEDIMENTS TO THE PREVENTION OF TRAVEL-RELATED INJURY: SOCIETAL AS WELL AS INDIVIDUALISTIC
    Tony H. Reinhardt-Rutland

    Hemenway (1) describes three beliefs which may jeopardize injury- avoidance: optimistic ("it will never happen to me"), fatalistic ("accidents happen") and materialistic ("you probably deserved it"). Such a scheme parallels well-known trait theories regarding the individual's general personality (2); given the value of those endeavours,Hemenway's scheme deserves serious consideration.

    Nonetheless, it may be inco...

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  • Old hypothesis that roads are safer than cycle tracks unsupported by data
    Anne C. Lusk

    We acknowledge that we did not control for all of the differences in road geometry and building typologies because there are no ideal matched streets (Re: Cooper). However, alternative research designs also have limitation and feasibility issues. For before and after study designs, some of the Montreal cycle tracks are 20 years old, before injury surveillance and traffic counting data systems were available. Limiting to...

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  • Effectiveness of breed-specific legislation in decreasing dog-bite injury hospitalizations in Manitoba--what it means to researchers, policy-makers and the public
    Malathi Raghavan

    Our population-based study (1) on the effectiveness of breed-specific legislation (BSL) targeting pit-bull (terrier) type dogs in the Canadian province of Manitoba generated some interest in the media and among policy -makers and the public in Canada and the United States (2-10). With this experience of listening to different stakeholders and communicating with some, we hope to elaborate on our findings in language that is...

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  • Comparing apples with apples? Abusive Head Trauma, Drowning and LSVROs
    Richard C. Franklin

    Kerrianne Watt1, Richard C Franklin1, Belinda Wallis2, 3, Bronwyn Griffin2, 3, Peter Leggat1; Roy Kimble2,3

    1School of Public Health, Tropical Medicine and Rehabilitation Sciences, James Cook University

    2Queensland Children's Medical Research Institute

    3Royal Children's Hospital, Centre for Burns and Trauma Research, School of Medicine, University of Queensland

    Re Infant Abusive H...

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  • Still more errors and omissions
    M Kary

    When Lusk et al. submit to the editor a formal list of errata to be attached to their article, I expect they will duly correct all the errors, omissions, and false statements that have been brought to their attention, and not just the three they chose to mention here. This would include amongst other items providing a correct explanation for their choices of particular termination points (rather than the non...

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  • "In Montreal, no greater risk on cycle tracks"
    Anne C. Lusk

    We regret the two errors that Kary identified. "What this study adds" should read published crash [not injury] rates (the article body states it correctly), and the Rachel length is 1.7 km [not 3.5]. In Table 1, correcting for 1.7 doubles Rachel's absolute incident rates; however, it raises overall crash and injury rates by only 10% to 9.6 and 11.5, respectively. In Table 2, the relative risk comparison is unaffected sinc...

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  • Flaws in the 2010 Lusk Montreal Study - streets with statistically significant results.
    Ian B Cooper

    1. Rue de Brebeuf Cycle Track vs. Rue St. Denis between Rachel and Laurier.

    These streets are not comparable.

    Brebeuf (which has a cycle track) is a narrow 40kph slow-moving one- way residential street with one traffic lane and one parking lane.

    Rue St. Denis (which has no cycle track) is a six-lane (two lanes often taken up by parking) 50kph limit two-way highway in a commercial area with lot...

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  • Young Drivers
    Ronald A Napier

    The Results of this study are interesting, particularly comparisons to other countries. I'd be also interested in looking into driver license test standards. Having worked as an expat in the UK 1999-2005, I knew many who have tried unsuccessfully to obtain a driver's license because of the high test standards. You must pass a written test, video response test and the road test. Only 30% successfully complete all three on t...

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  • Compendium of errors and omissions, or: What is not in this article
    M Kary

    Injury Prevention asks that responses to articles be kept to less than about 300 words. The volume of errors and omissions in this article by Lusk et al. is so excessive that it took me rather more than that-- including photographs of the actual streets-- just to document them. The result is now hosted on John S. Allen's bicycle pages and can be directly found by searching the internet for e.g. these terms:...

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  • INEQUALITIES IN SIZE AND POWER ACROSS ROAD-USERS
    Tony H. Reinhardt-Rutland

    Ackery et al (1) show that risk to cyclists in collisions with motor- vehicles increases with the size of the motor-vehicle. This evidence may generalize to other types of collisions: consistent with Ackery et al are studies concerning different sizes of automobile with pedestrians (2,4) and collisions concerning different sizes of automobiles in general (3). One can infer that a smaller entity - both in terms of linear d...

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