I just saw a car accident a block from my house. Someone ran a red light, resulting in a bone crash. I don’t know which car ran the red, it could have been either. I don’t think there would have been a crash had they both been buggies. Ban cars, especially in cities.
Mennonite here, and I think their buggy use is just fine.
You DO know that the vast majority of modern Mennonites are just normal people like Baptists or other conservative sects, right? I spent years in a Mennonite community, and never once rode in a buggy. I never even saw one in town. There were a handful of old orthodox Mennonites around, out of thousands of other modern Mennonites. They wore black, didn’t have mirrors in their house, etc. But even in a Mennonite community they were considered very odd. We only visited them to buy produce occasionally.
Pedestrians can cross a road anywhere, especially on a rural road. It’s a driver’s responsibility to drive as if anything might suddenly be ahead on the road.
Rants, particularly rants that contain a fair amount of misinformation, belong in The BBQ Pit.
Off you go.
Now that this is in the Pit: check that join date, people! This isn’t for real and/or we have another bored student on Summer Break.
Dumb. I used to live in the third largest Amish and Mennonite community in the U.S. (I think it has fallen to number 4 in size.) The buggies were not “a hazard to everyone.” There were periodic accidents, but there are still accidents, even fatal one, all over outside their community.
If you insist on ranting, at least take the time to learn some facts. They are not claiming more holiness; they choose not to get involved with the outside community for the purpose of not being led into sin. In Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky, they were there when everyone drove buggies and the world just changed around them. As soon as you agree to build parallel roads so that they can get to the store with driving on the roads, I am sure they will stay off them. There are a few such roads in more heavily populated areas and they are more than delighted to stay off the highways.
Resolved: Yankees/English do not drive their cars into buggies.
Buggies also drive on the shoulder, or as much on the shoulder as is practical. They are as legally entitled to use a lane as any car is, when they don’t fit on the shoulder. Pedestrians are also often in the road on back roads where shoulders are narrow, rough, and/or nonexistent.
And buggies are just as necessary as cars. There is, and should be, no law saying that the only legitimate way to get around is in a car. The one exception is limited access highways; and those always have another public route provided for those who don’t want to use them.
Are you also going to claim that putting a child on a bicycle is scumbag behavior? How about choosing to drive a car, when that drastically increases your chances of killing somebody else’s child – why don’t you think that’s scumbag behavior? Cars cause huge amounts of damage to both lives and property, every day. It would make more sense to claim that driving a car is just a fucked-up personal choice.
AlphaOmegaMan, what you’ve got is a really bad case of thinking that you’ve got the One Right Way To Live, and nobody should be allowed to do anything else. That attitude, in itself, has killed more people in the history of the world than buggies ever will.
In the Pit now?
Good.
Fuck off, English.
One of my co-workers from that area said that she was at a grocery store with her daughter, who was about 5 years old at the time, and when they saw a group of Amish, the daughter pointed at them and said, “Look, Mommy! Pilgrims!”
Naturally, Mom was very embarrassed, but I told her that they had probably heard it before and had a good laugh on the way home.
Another time, I was eating lunch in the hospital cafeteria, and about 10 or 15 Amish, two of them women carrying babies in car seats, came in, and people were staring at them. :rolleyes: I overheard some people at the next table wondering why the Amish would need car seats. I’ll tell you: They may have hired a driver, and some people do use them in their buggies, as added protection.
Not long before I left that region, there was a semi/buggy accident that had several fatalities. 
The semi driver just hadn’t seen them.
And this one.
An Amish woman is on the road driving her horse and buggy when a police officer directs her to pull over.
The officer says, “Ma’am, you’re required to display a red caution triangle on the back of your vehicle. Yours is slanting off to the side and is about to fall off.”
The Amish woman replies, “OK I’ll tell my husband. He can fix that in about five minutes.”
The cop continues, “Also I don’t like the way your reins are wrapped around the testicles of one of your horses. We consider that animal cruelty. Tell your husband to look into that as well.”
When the woman arrives home, she tells her husband what the police officer said about the triangle.
The husband replies, “I can fix that in five minutes. Did he say anything else?”
The woman says, “Yes. He mentioned something about the emergency brake.”
Before the development of the bicycle, every mode of transport pretty much had it’s own road. Canal boat. Railway. Bridle path. Foot path. Carriage way. Then the bicycle appeared. People rode the damn things everywhere. On the towpaths. On the footpaths. On the bridle paths. On the carriage ways.
And yes, there were objections. There was a strong opinion that bikes should stay on bike paths, and that where there weren’t bikepaths, (that, everywhere), there shouldn’t be bikes. But people adjusted to it, so when automobiles first appeared, nobody was surprised that they were driven on the carriage ways. People rode their damned bicycles on the carriage ways, why not automobiles as well?
In case anyone else feels like responding directly to the OP, please note that after a stellar 8-day career here, he is no longer with us. Those wishing to be enlightened by further insights on the buggy issue, or on why African Americans should be responsible for their own reparations, may be able to subscribe to his newsletter.
Might this guy, in fact, have been SamuelA Rev “B”?
Tripler
Just curious…
Nope, he’s still suspended. We’re supposed to ask a Mod about such things, anyway.
What’s this?
clop clop-clop BANG! clop clop-clop
Amish drive-by-shooting.
For some reason that brings to mind one of our unique wineries around here: 
This reminds me of one of my favorite commercials of all time:
Under Maine law, if someone is riding or leading an animal on a public way, and the animal is frightened, the animal handler can raise a hand in the universal “stop” signal to other vehicles, and other drivers are required to stop and allow the animal to pass. Penalties are the same as failing to stop at a stop sign.
http://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/statutes/29-a/title29-Asec2055.html
There is a huge safety advantage to driving a buggy. If you’ve drunk too much and pass out, the horse will return back to its barn without human assistance. Let’s see your fancy dancy car do that.
It won’t be too long before that happens.