OT: Any Cyclists?

[Christopher Browne]

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 6:17 AM, Michael Lauzon <mlauzon-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 00:09, Stan Witkowski <Stan-IWrolz/j94yY+5vIsb+96wC/G2K4zDHf at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> Now you have all kinds of complete idiots feeling that they have a God-given
>> right to
>> zip through stop signs, red lights, sidewalks, cars, etc.
>>
>>
>> Stan.
>>
>
> You can say the same thing about people with vehicles as well.

I imagine I could, but it wouldn't make it representative of reality.
(That there exists *one* person driving a motor vehicle that does so
isn't sufficiently representative of reality.)

I don't regularly see people driving motor vehicles in the wrong
direction / on the wrong side of the road.  I do, on the other hand,
see people with bicycles doing that with saddening regularity.

There are a LOT of cars on the roads - I do not see many "driving
anarchists" that evidence that they ignore traffic rules to the degree
that they're continually on the wrong side of the street or do not
stop, altogether.

I see far fewer cyclists, but of that smaller set, I do, fairly
regularly, see this sort of "anarchist."  The "utterly ignore rules of
road" seems rather more frequent amongst cyclists.

It's fairly logical for things to be so; there is an expectation for
police to triage their efforts towards the sorts of activities that
cause more public damage, and we might sum that up with the example:

 - Car goes out of control, crashing into a house.  Major property
damage, easily leading to injury and death of innocents.

 - Bicycle goes out of control, crashing into a house.  Thud.

This isn't entirely representative, as scenarios go, but it's
illustrative...  Someone that hurts only their own self via doing
something dumb (or even illegal) isn't nearly as crucial for police to
intervene in as the alternative case which leads to significant damage
to others.

There's rather less incentive for cyclists to follow the law, and
there is even ambiguity (e.g. - is "road=motorists+cyclists" a better
fit than "sidewalk=pedestrians+cyclists"?)  To an extent, cyclists are
"not perfectly welcome" on either sidewalk or road.  That's somewhat
codified in law, for Segways, but "where should cyclists be?" is
rather less clear.

We have cycle lanes that have been created, which taxis like to park
in, illegally.  Which doesn't encourage any detente in the matter.
-- 
http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists