Buggies on the roads are a hazard to everyone. If Mennonites, or anyone else, want to use buggies, do it off the roads. They are too holy to use cars, but not too holy to use roads built with even more complex machines?
Resolved: no buggies the roads. Buggies cannot keep up the proper pace. Buggies do not have the proper safety features–crumple zones, airbags, seat belts, lights. Buggies are too light.
If we heard about a parent driving a child around in car that could go 5 mph, had no lights, no seat belts, no airbags, no crumple zones, we would call it negligent parenting.
Do you think there’s some other sort of road network they could use?
They pay taxes for the upkeep of those roads. They’re as entitled to use the roads as anybody else.
So are people on foot. So are people on bicycles. So are people who need to move farm equipment, so that you can get something to eat. The world is not limited to people who get around in cars, nor should it be.
You want a road you don’t have to share with anything but cars? Stay on the limited-access expressways.
Or…you could make sense. You have thrown out a specious position and then failed to defend it in any fashion. Why should this be met with anything but mockery?
Only the most conservative Mennonites would use a buggy or eschew the Internet. You’re thinking Amish.
I used to live in an area with a sizable Amish population, and their buggies were not legal without an orange triangle, and most of them also had battery-powered lights on the front and back, for nighttime use.
The last time I drove through Amish country here in Ontario well over a decade ago, which I did regularly to get to a friend’s country cottage, the Amish buggies were exactly like that, driving on the shoulder and fully in conformance with traffic laws. The OP appears to be inventing a problem where there actually isn’t one. Along the way were also some excellent cheese producers and a takeout with the best onion rings I’ve ever had in my life. I always looked forward to the trip. The buggies were not the least of a problem. They were actually rather picturesque, and I imagine the Amish found the cars rather annoying but patiently endured them.
There are a lot of Old Order Mennonites around here.
You’re right that the term covers a lot of ground, and the more liberal branches do use cars and the net. But there’s quite a large community that do use buggies and not the net.
Single horses are worse. No lights, no orange triangles, dark colored horse with a rider wearing dark colors in the shadows. Can’t see that until you almost hit it. No Amish, etc around here, just rich women on vacation and city people who bought a horse farm in the country.
One time on my motorcycle I was trying to pass a woman riding a horse on the other side of the dirt road, she kept yelling at me “Slow down! My horse is afraid of motorcycles! SLOW DOWN!!!”
I’m yelling “Lady, if I go any slower I’ll tip over”.
And maybe if your horse is afraid of motorized vehicles, you shouldn’t ride it on a public road. WHY would you want to ride an easily spooked animal on a public road? Oh, because you can- AMERICA!
I’m sure the OP resents having to give right-of-way to pedestrians, too.
As the prior posted noted, here in Indiana we have a sizable buggy-using community, to the point there are stores like Walmart that provide buggy parking and water for the horses while the owners are inside shopping. Oddly enough, it’s not mass carnage on the roads. For the buggies. A LOT of folks in cars with air bags, crumple zones, seat belts, etc. crashing and dying on the freeways where buggies aren’t allowed but fatal buggy accidents are rare around here.
Motorcycles - which also do not have airbags, crumple zones, seat belts, etc. - are actually far more dangerous.
We don’t let pedestrians just walk down the road in a lane. They walk out of the flow of traffic on the shoulder. Farm equipment is necessary. A buggy is just a fucked-up personal choice. Putting a child in a buggy is scumbag behavior.
We live not far from an Amish community in Smicksburg, PA. I’ve only had positive interactions with them. They do not proselytize their religion (whatever it is). I’ll happily share the road with them, and drive with extra caution when in their community.
