Regular as clockworks these threads are. Nobody can actually defend the antics of the cyclists actually pitted, so we turn to the evils of The Motorists.
That’s right, The Motorists. Huge packs of 'em careening down the motorways crushing old ladies and orphans. How dare you even question the poor innocent cyclists and completely ignore the danger of The Motorists? When’s the last time you heard of a cyclist killing a nun? How about The Motorists? They nuns all the time. Practically a sport to 'em.
Cyclists simply cannot be inconsiderate or rude or anything but saintly because The Motorists are so much worse.
Just once I would love to see a thread about cyclists where noone compares them to motorists.
If we hadn’t got an infrastructure designed specifically around the ‘needs’ of motorists, often at the expense of others, and that didn’t also have designed into it extra safety measures to combat the moronic motorists, then maybe we’d see the absence you desire. By forcing other users to accomodate a motorist-dominated environment, it makes the errors & selfishness of the motorists all the more apparent.
Are you certain? Last I checked, terrorists did not kill some 50,000 people each year in the United States alone. I think the terrorist record year was just above 3000 people killed in the US.
But this thread isn’t about the errors and selfishness of motorists is it? That just sort of got dragged in here by people who apparently think cyclists should be absolved of every behavior because motorists are worse.
That’s like going into every Bush bashing thread and saying that Bush is a good president simply because he isn’t Pol Pot.
Try me. The cyclists actually pitted don’t exist. Read the OP. The cylists being pitted are the non-law abiding ones that (allegedly) are a real danger to pedestrians. They don’t exist.
If you want a really, really good example of your disconnect from reality, you need to think about this a bit longer. I’ll give you a clue. There were 25,000 deaths or serious injuries in the UK alone caused by motorists. Now, think real hard about terrorists in the UK over the same period…
Like I said earlier, it’s not about the numbers. I know cars are far more dangerous than cyclists. It’s the fucking idea that something cannot be bad simply because worse things exist.
Do you go into work related pit threads and say that a persons job isn’t bad because they don’t work in a sweat shop?
Oh for god sake he’s talking about his drive to work, not the broad ranging stats everyone else is reaching for. Is a little bit of hyperbole really worth this much argument?
My first post in this thread was in response to TheLoadedDog who claimed that car drivers rarely, if ever, break traffic laws. By comparison, he claimed all cyclists break all the laws. Not only was this completely incorrect, but it was the same comparison you are now whining about.
I don’t claim A is good because B is worse, I claim that A is being targeted unfairly as a threat when a much bigger one exists.
My head is starting to hurt. This is now starting to get surreal. No cyclist anywhere, ever, has done ANYTHING wrong. Ever. At all. Is that right?
And I’m now saying stuff I didn’t say. Yes?
Hokay…
You guys have completely discredited yourselves. I’m outta this thread. Claim you’ve hounded me away by all means, but this has gone off into fucking cuckooland, and I trust the judgement of the several hundred sane people who have viewed this thread to be with me on this.
To the sensible cyclists out there, you have my sympathy that these nutters are on your side.
Actually, my post was primarily in response to Casdaves posts in the thread accusing drivers of, amongst other things, being unable to walk anywhere over one millimeter farther than they must. He also says…
I know you meant your terrorist example as an illustration, it’s just that the example you chose says interesting things about how well you grok the proportionality of this debate.
Every human activity involves risk. Everything we do is a trade-off between time, convenience, fun etc and risk. Every choice we make about how we behave (even completely law abiding choices) has risk implications. If I decide to play a round of golf that is an utterly law abiding and socially normal activity, but creates real risks for other golfers and for people and property surrounding the golf course. I’m sure you wouldn’t chastise me for making a decision to play a round of golf. Why not? According to you, I can’t justify my decision simply on the basis that there are other activities I could indulge in that would create more risk.
In fact, to pretend that one can consider whether non-law abiding behaviour of cyclists is actually significantly bad without considering the surrounding matrix of risks and behaviours that we consider to be normal is unrealistic.
If it annoys you to have cyclists compared to motorists as such, instead of thinking of motorists as a specific relevant example of other road users, just think of them as an illustrative data point that shows the type of risk level that we consider acceptable and normal in average western society.
The level of threat to the OP due to cyclist behaviour is actually something close to 200 times lower than the level of threat posed by an ordinary, indeed all pervasive aspect of normal western society. Ergo, it must not be bad or threatening, in any real sense.
Yet the OP percieves it to be, and so do you.
The fact is, the operative premise is irrational.
And no I haven’t been stalking dopers. I don’t need to. Unless the OP’s personal circumstances involve a 200/1 anomaly, the dangerous cyclists the OP perceives, do not exist.