Well, yeah - but my reaction to motorists complaining about cyclists blowing red lights:
Get on your bike, and you can do it too. Anarchy’s so much more enjoyable.
1 Like
it may not work at all, but I’m not just gonna let them door me. doesn’t work: same outcome. works: hey, no road rash today.
1 Like
don’t hate the player, hate the game
1 Like
When I spent some time in Kansas City, this was pretty common (they had multiple cycling groups every day though, not just Saturdays). The groups I rode with did stop at traffic lights, especially as the police would fine you if you didn’t. While it may hurt your time a little, accelerating from a standstill is good practice and you can find routes where the main part has very few stops. The only time I skipped lights was when they were motion sensing ones that didn’t detect bikes.
1 Like
Ah well to be fair that changes everything. Your single lanes are like two of our lanes.
For a “newly registered trolley” @esaund is being quite polite, using evidence and logic to support his point. The new poster’s opinion clearly differs from yours, but we’re entitled to disagree here.
At least he’s not advising people who disagree with him to “go fuck themselves.” That would definitely be trollish.
3 Likes
It’s easy to be polite when you’re poking the fire.
It’s not a difference of opinion, it’s a completely different outlook and requires one to be wilfully ignorant. Anyone who can watch that video and think ‘yea, just two bad guys’ IS being wilfully ignorant. And yea I’ll reiterate,
But to those attempting to paint this as ‘two bad road users’ can go fuck themselves.
Stick it on a plaque.
One of those road users was at risk of being seriously injured through the actions of one of the other road users. There’s no more equality there than in a tussle between a cop and a suspect. The cyclist made a couple of minor errors after deciding to chase the guy down and have words - unadvisable? Definitely! Argument invalidating? Hells no!!!
Hand waving about him being on a path (while he was fleeing an assault!!) or nearly hitting a pedestrian (even though he clearly didn’t), and likens a cycle being close to pedestrians (where I live there are several routes where cyclists and pedestrians share paths) as being hypocritical when talking about a car near-missing a cycle isn’t presenting evidence, they’re reaching for a strawman argument and victim blaming. Sick sick sick of it. The law is just as apathetic and I’m tired of it. It’s not even that it’s strictly incorrect, it’s just utterly irrelevant, and entirely unequal. One does not cancel out the other.
When cars don’t kill thousands of cyclists every year (just in my small country), and cyclists pose a genuine threat to other road users then we can come back to this discussion. Until then it’s trolling, derailing nonsense.
Every single fucking thread that even breaths the word cyclist attracts these people who then go on about running red lights and riding on paths (and I’m not denying it happens, as a multi-vehicle road user it irks me too, never personally affected me though) like that even has any bearing on a discussion about licensed road users almost killing people all the damn time! If there were ever a video that could bring us all together, this could have been it - but no, “I found something the cyclist did wrong! Let’s focus on that! He’s just a hypocrite!” FUCK OFF.
If what you crave is evidence (loose definition much?) then take a gander at this, risks for pedestrians:
Weird, cyclists aren’t even on the list!
Oh, and what’s this? Risks for cyclists:
When someone you know and love is killed by a licensed cyclist operating their vehicle illegally PM me and I’ll come back to the thread. I’ll be waiting patiently.
2 Likes
Yeah, I think this is a valid parallel to draw. But are we talking about what’s fair, or are we talking about reality? What’s fair is that we all treat each other with respect and consideration, and so we don’t e.g. pass unsafely or catcall attractively-dressed women walking down the street minding their own business. There are lots of good, self-interested reasons to behave this way, entirely aside from the obvious “basic human decency” angle.
However, risking death on principle is a really bad idea unless (a) the principle is really important, (b) putting your life at risk, if you succeed, will accomplish something major, and © there is a strong likelihood of the life-risking activity actually succeeding in achieving the intended result. Risking your life to change the world for the better is heroism; risking your life stupidly is just idiocy.
In this situation, there is no great goal to achieve by taking such a risk. Hence, a non-suicidal person will follow best practices for safe sharing of the road, even if some of those practices involve doing things to make impolite behavior more difficult.
Furthermore, in the case of bicycles and cars sharing the road, often the issue is not malice, as it is with catcalling, but rather simply bad judgment or lack of reflection. The guy who honked at me day before yesterday for taking the lane when I was going around a blind corner with no room to safely pass in a 50mph zone didn’t want the opportunity to risk my life; he simply hadn’t considered that if I got over to let him pass, that’s what I’d be doing.
2 Likes
To be clear, there’s only one bad road user here. The other guy is just an idiot for poking at a hornet’s nest, and possibly not as defensive of a bicyclist as he ought to be for his own safety. Not being defensive enough doesn’t make you a bad road user, but it can get you killed.
2 Likes
I’ll just leave this here:
5 Likes
Quite. Motorists kill tens of thousands of people each year - mostly doing things that they’ve got away with doing “safely” for years. Drunk driving isn’t acceptable just because you haven’t hit anyone yet. Red light jumping isn’t acceptable just because you haven’t hit anyone yet. Not checking your mirrors and over your shoulder before lane changing isn’t acceptable just because you haven’t hit anyone yet. Tailgating isn’t acceptable just because you haven’t rear-ended anyone yet. Using your phone to text while driving isn’t acceptable just because you haven’t hit anyone yet. Squeezing past someone at a distance and speed that will kill them if they wobble slightly because of a pothole you haven’t noticed, or because you underestimated how close the previous driver passed them, isn’t acceptable just because you haven’t hit anyone yet.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
