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It's Never a Bicycle Accident

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Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#81

Post by m_mueller »

Jochim wrote: post #13
m_mueller wrote: post #3

I wish journalism was concerned less with words and more with pointing out how to solve problems. This one in particular seems to be mostly a failure at city planning and lack of drivers education. It seems to me that car companies should be way less powerful in the US than they were 50 years ago (in terms of % of GDP), thus there should be a way out of this. Compare good and bad cities, shame the bad ones. Get insur…

The usage of words affects people's perception of the problem though. The current wording minimises the problem to a degree that most people won't buy in to your solutions.

Trying to change words together with trying to push through solutions is IMO totally OK. But only working on the wording is to me a typical symptom of an IMO particularly useless kind of politics.

I give you a particularly egregious example coming out of Swiss German: Somewhere after WW2, handicapped people became a big topic. At the same time, the German word for "handicap" apparently started to become a bit of a swear word for some reason ("behindert"). So, politics changed the word to... "invalid". So now, people aren't just being labelled handicaped but actually worthless - thanks, I hate it. And then the word got calcified by introducing the state "invalidity insurance" (Invalidenversicherung) in 1960. Politicians really have a knack for butchering the language.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#82

Post by goodcanadian »

wozniacki wrote: post #58
ehnto wrote: post #5

I always tell people I am not a cyclist, I am a bloke who rides a bike. The vilification of a group is how you make harming them palatable to people, and we have all heard the rhetoric surrounding "cyclists". I am far sooner a friend, a son, a partner and someone you know, than a cyclist. I don't even qear lycra, and I spend my whole ride trying to be courteous so at least extend me the same courtesy. Also, get off y…

and we have all heard the rhetoric surrounding "cyclists". Are you saying that not even a smidgen of truth belies such rhetoric? Cyclists roll through signals, intersections & stop signs as if they were mere suggestions and nothing more. I know how entrenched each sides are in this argument - drivers and cyclists. Neither will give an inch. The best way to get cyclists some kind of safety is to INSIST on a full bore…

Cyclists roll through signals, intersections & stop signs as if they were mere suggestions and nothing more.

As do a lot of car drivers.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#83

Post by kumaranv »

It's the same story everywhere. Cyclists are blamed not only for their mistakes but for others' mistakes as well. When an accident happened, a cyclist is blamed irrespective of whoever is at mistake. I have seen it first-hand multiple times. Also, people casually say that why are these cyclists ride on busy roads?

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#84

Post by matsemann »

anovikov wrote: post #11

Absolutely untrue. I am not a cyclist but i have about once in 3 months or so, a near accident where i just barely avoid crushing or rolling over some crazy cyclist that falls on his damn bike right under my car or drives from round the corner at full speed without damn looking anywhere. However careful i am trying to be it's just a matter of luck that i didn't kill anyone (and i once scratched my car and the other g…

Are you driving in the bike lane?

Otherwise I cannot fathom how people are almost dead by your car every other month. Or aren't you following the law by holding a safe distance and a reasonable speed, perhaps?

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#85

Post by renewiltord »

WalterBright wrote: post #62
renewiltord wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, looks like the law will work there. He'll have lots of explaining to do and the explaining will be easy. Hardly sounds like a counter-example.

The idea of "default" liability is unjust. Who is at fault needs to be proven, at least with a preponderance of evidence. If that cannot be done, then liability should be shared.

No, the idea of "default" liability is just. Since driving in most places is a privilege not a right, arbitrary restrictions can be imposed. In this case, the restrictions simply involve increased risk of sanctions for the ability to drive increasingly risky vehicles.

This has a strong precedent: Class A vs Class C licences.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#86

Post by clairity »

caslon wrote: post #70
clairity wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “...I would love it if reckless drivers would lose their license at the first offense.” that’s too punitive, but i’d be quite happy with a quickly escalating, income-/wealth-adjusted fine. so like 0.01% of yearly income on first offense, 0.1% on second offense, 1% on third offense, or something like that, on a rolling 12-month basis, where you can voluntarily give up you license for 3 months to reset the scale of y…

How is it too punitive? They're operating a massive structure of (usually literally) flaming steel. If they can't consider the safety of people who very plausibly will be their victims without constant vigilance, they really shouldn't be driving. Doubly so for pickups, which are now so large that they offer a near-nonexistent risk on the driver's end for poor driving and nearly-certain serious-injury-and-or-death for…

i agree that it’s the sole job of a driver to maneuver their 2-ton vehicle safely and without distraction (especially not phone distraction), but it does no good to be blindered by retributive rage when considering a counterbalancing incentive structure. we are fallible humans in a highly dynamic world, so let’s have some empathy and compassion for every mistake-making human, not just arbitrarily small groupings of them.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#87

Post by globular-toast »

I firmly believe that nobody should be using the road in a car until they have learnt to use the road on a bicycle.

Pilots don't learn to fly in airliners. Captains don't learn to sail in ocean liners. Why on earth do we let people operate machinery weighing multiple tons and capable of high speeds on the public highway without having anywhere near the same level of experience?

99% of car operators on the road have zero experience of the road outside of a car. A person on a bike is still a person, but a person in a car is a car. They can't feel the road. They hate travelling under the speed limit because there's a tank of fossil fuel and they only need to squeeze a pedal to effortlessly ascend hills or battle the wind. This is why they will never treat cyclists as people and with respect.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#88

Post by caslon »

clairity wrote: post #86
caslon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it too punitive? They're operating a massive structure of (usually literally) flaming steel. If they can't consider the safety of people who very plausibly will be their victims without constant vigilance, they really shouldn't be driving. Doubly so for pickups, which are now so large that they offer a near-nonexistent risk on the driver's end for poor driving and nearly-certain serious-injury-and-or-death for…

i agree that it’s the sole job of a driver to maneuver their 2-ton vehicle safely and without distraction (especially not phone distraction), but it does no good to be blindered by retributive rage when considering a counterbalancing incentive structure. we are fallible humans in a highly dynamic world, so let’s have some empathy and compassion for every mistake-making human, not just arbitrarily small groupings of t…

It's not retributive to not allow someone who has failed the most important task in driving to drive. We don't allow children to do it, we don't allow the (extremely) elderly to do it, we shouldn't allow people who put others at risk to do it either.

Empathy and compassion are all fine and good, and in this case, the compassionate would make sure to take anyone who has shown willingness to cause an accident off the road for good. Not even a terrible person deserves to have a murder on their conscience, and nobody deserves to die because someone wasn't paying enough attention while flying down the highway.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#89

Post by numlock86 »

A lot of comments point out situations with car drivers not being considerate of cyclists. Not to defend car drivers, but you could interchange car drivers with cyclists and cyclists with pedestrians and you would end up with people giving the same anecdotes. You see cyclists speeding through "walk only" areas just as you see cars ignoring bike lanes or giving space to cyclists in general. You'll see just as much people on the phone or even texting while riding a bike, too. Et cetera.

You might argue a bike hitting a pedestrian probably won't be as lethal as two tonnes of SUV hitting a cyclist, but that's a lame justification curled in the deepest realms of double standards. There's plenty of examples when cyclists didn't care enough about cars because the car is supposed to act as the cyclist is apparently clearly in a disadvantage. Same with pedestrians and cyclists, again.

Again, not to defend or blame anyone. I am driving my car maybe two times per month and I am mostly on bike, foot or public transport. But from my experience you just have assholes with egocentric justifications and reasoning on all sides.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#90

Post by MrRiddle »

gorgoiler wrote: post #74
clairity wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “...I would love it if reckless drivers would lose their license at the first offense.” that’s too punitive, but i’d be quite happy with a quickly escalating, income-/wealth-adjusted fine. so like 0.01% of yearly income on first offense, 0.1% on second offense, 1% on third offense, or something like that, on a rolling 12-month basis, where you can voluntarily give up you license for 3 months to reset the scale of y…

In societies with professional money managing services, how do you fine someone who has no personal income, no wealth, and is in millions of dollars in debt*? *...to an offshore shell company over which they have 100% control.

Percent of the car they were driving.
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