I’m not sure we are the ones taking stuff personally, just now. Are you so sure it’s us?
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Yes it’s legal, and is in fact the advised strategy.
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That’s…literally all you’ve done, this whole thread, is defend this particular cyclist’s actions.
Eating while driving isn’t in the UK. There was a well-known case a while back of a woman being prosecuted for eating an apple while driving. Just taking a sip of a drink while driving can be dangerous enough
Someone I work with was pulled over by the police for drinking coffee while driving (in the UK). He wasn’t fined, just given a verbal warning.
There are a lot of people commenting that its fine to eat cereal whilst wielding 2000 kg of metal and >150,000 Watts of power. That is not an OK position to hold.
If you want to be allowed to be in charge of such a machine then make sure it has your undivided attention. If you don’t, expect to be challenged. I applaud the cyclist for doing what everyone should be doing and making people aware when they’re being downright dangerous.
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Seriously. People are getting upset about mishandling devices with a mass between 0.5 and 1.5kg that can project maybe a watt of power. Yet there are so many people here all sanguine about negligent and distracted piloting of literally a body-crushing machine.
If I operated a forklift (significantly smaller, lighter, and even less dangerous in a crash) with the level of distraction this woman displayed, I’d be rightfully fired.
Why would it be okay to pilot a heavy, powerful machine like a car in public distracted, when it’s definitely not okay to pilot something much safer in private?
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I was going to say something similar, but you said it better than I could have. It’s primarily for historical reasons that most people are allowed to drive cars at all.
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I’d say the geography of the US makes cars pretty necessary. As long as we have tens of thousands of cities, the railroads can’t really handle that kind of traffic. And as long as we aren’t really paying to keep our infrastructure from crumbling, then the roads are pretty much all we’ll have for public right-of-way eventually.
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Exactly, we have what we inherited.
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You should be defending this cyclist’s actions. She was out of line and it needed pointing out. He was clear and it’s hard to see how we could be more polite without losing the point - He simply told her to put the bowl down while she was driving and that he was going to report her to the police. She drove off having not put down the bowl and with more than a little contempt.
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So it’s OK to hold different opinions on how illegal eating cereal while driving should be. It has been established in this forum that it is illegal in Britain.
It’s also OK to hold different opinions on how far other citizens should go in pointing out inconsiderate/dangerous/illegal behaviour by their fellow citizens.
But someone please explain why so many people were supporting the violent destruction of a poor little drone when their use was deemed “inconsiderate”, while raising your voice against a motorist is an excessive response. It somehow doesn’t fit.
Is it because both private drone operators and cyclists are classified as “spoiled hipsters”, while drunk “gentlemen” and cereal-eating motorists are classified as “upstanding citizens”?
yes she should kill someone before we start worrying about bad drivers
[insert Fry “can’t tell if driving trollies” meme here]
I think I saw the same guy a few years ago on the Wilbur Cross. I was waiting to see if he’d keep playing his horn if he drove off the Sikorsky bridge and plummeted into the river.
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Banging on car windows doesn’t kill 30,000 people per year in the US alone. Driving cars does. Yep, driving is easily the most dangerous thing most of us do, at least in terms of the risk to others. (Bad diet, smoking and lack of exercise are also pretty risky in terms of what they do to us personally.)
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We cyclists take this stuff personally becasue it is us who will be killed.
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Maybe dude is just lactose intolerant.
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On the occassions I have done similar things in repsonse to motorists directly risking my life, I can assure you I didn’t enjoy it at all. Extremely unpleasant and stressful. I have stopped doing it because It upsets me and I don’t think it is helpful. Motorists like this woman don’t get, and likely won’t be presuaded by someone yelling at them. They will simply become idignant and more defensive of their actions.
You only have to see the torrent of victim blaming and justification of the ongoing slaughter that pours forth on threads about cyclists to get a feel for how much we are held in contempt and despised by many ignorant motorists.
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SamSam - Accent, position of driver in car, license plates, roadsigns… all seem to indicate that this was taking place in a country other then the US - one where people drive on the LEFT side of the road.
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