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the_Culture_is_great


				

				

				
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User ID: 3228

the_Culture_is_great


				
				
				

				
0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2024 August 30 21:31:52 UTC

					

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User ID: 3228

I would have said "leafs" or "canucks" but both of those are actual NHL teams (Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadians respectively).

Canucks are Vancouver, Montreal are the CanadiEns

  1. Yes for habit, no penalty if not
  2. Yes for cars, Idaho stop should be legal for bikes. A very slow rolling stop in a car is a minor sin though, many places would be fine with yields only.
  3. No, minor speeding is fine as long as safe for conditions - in sense areas traffic calming design is better, on highways limits should typically be higher. I'd prefer saner speed limits that are enforced to the letter in general rather than loosely goosy ones though.
  4. Yes, left lane is for passing (on freeways, streets are different due to turns). Riding a bumper is dangerous, but expected to happen if you're not passing on the left
  5. No, dangerous for everyone. Accept that the other person isn't considerate and merge safely later.
  6. No, despite the fact that some drivers can make better decisions, the rules should be universal for everyone.
  7. Bikes should take the entire lane if it's not safe to pass within the lane with >1m of space.

If you legalize punching the air around people's heads, I very much think that leafs to much more harm, due to inaccuracy and the tendency for that to start real fights. I don't have a source for this, but I think anyone reasonable would agree.

Legalizing the Idaho stop would not - as the studies done in places like Idaho and Delaware show.

People aren't qualified to determine what is or is not safe

This is nanny state nonsense - if drivers can be trusted at a roundabout or a yield sign, there's no reason that cyclists can't be at a stop sign

If I run up to you and punch the air around your face did I cause you any harm? No.

This is not equivalent to the Idaho stop. Treating a stop sign as a yield is not equivalent to violent threats.

No it's very related.

If the "bad" behavior doesn't cause harm, then how is it "bad"?

I think you're very much in a minority here. I would take walking around Amsterdam vs literally any major north american city, and above most European ones as well.

I agree there's a tradeoff, but Amsterdam demonstrably works as a walkable city, even if it's not somewhere you can just zone out and walk.

I don't care about "at times" I care about overall, statistically, after making this behavior legal.

The studies that have been done on this (start with the citations in the wiki article) show either no effect, or a positive effect. The people most concerned with a cyclists safety are typically the cyclists themselves, that's why the behavior is so common, it feels safe, and is safe. Stats show very low risk to anyone else.

And like you say you want cyclists to stop, but you actually don't. It's even more annoying waiting behind a group of cyclists all stopping then slowly getting back up to speed. Annoying enough that following the letter of the law has been used as a protest. https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/sf-cyclists-to-protest-stopping-at-stop-signs-with-stop-in/

The point is if you're just angry about cyclists breaking the letter of the law, then to be consistent you should be just as angry at drivers speeding.

If you're concerned about safety, then you shouldn't care about not coming to a full stop at a stop sign, it's a non-issue safety wise. Adopting the Idaho stop, and enforcing the letter of the law against cyclists who fail to even yield would get no argument from me. Enforcing that every cyclist fully stops at a stop sign strikes me as the same kind of thing as stopping every driver who's 2mph over - entirely a waste of everyone's time.

No cyclist wants to conflict with pedestrians - that's why they would prefer dedicated lanes. Would you support adding those to benefit both pedestrians and cyclists (and where there's enough space, it's a benefit to drivers too).

Yes, many poor or irresponsible people ride bikes or ebikes, probably higher than cars. That's not a knock against bikes it's a knock against the poor and irresponsible. In places with higher percentages of bike usage this is much less common. If cycling was nicer, with more infrastructure, this issue decreases as it becomes more attractive to those more responsible people.

Going from 0->1 lanes is a heck of a lot more impactful than going from 10->11 lanes.

Intercity rail isn't going to be on every street.

Ditto for light rail.

Sidewalks are for streets, not freeways.

In space-contrainses areas most people would absolutely sacrifice trees.

I get where you're coming from, more movement does have a benefit that's often ignored, but it's disingenuous to compare the request for a bike lane or a sidewalk to another freeway lane.

I mean *most, local laws do vary.

Even if it isn't illegal, it's usually also not illegal to not ride on the road, despite there being a sidewalk.

Somewhat more commonly laws mandate cycle path use, which in this case apparently there was. Though it could have been obstructed, or otherwise unsafe at his speed (certain paths are designed poorly enough that they're actually worse than no path).

I grant that in some areas, yes the cyclist could have been breaking the law. Still a minor infraction, not particularly dangerous (and what danger would be mostly on the cyclist), the biggest thing being a rather small annoyance to the drivers who had to wait to pass.

Why do cars get a pass for breaking the law for speeding? Because speeding on the highways is relatively safe?

Treating a stop sign as a yield while on a bike is also relatively safe, and is explicitly legal in many areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

I frequently see cyclists idaho stop, breaking the law in a relatively safe way. I see them straight up blow through lights at full speed a lot less frequently, about the same as I see cars.

And every car infraction is at least 10x more dangerous to others due to size and speed.

This isn't "twisted" logic. If the lane is too narrow to pass legally in, then cars have to merge to the other lane (or wait) anyways. Riding in the centre makes the cyclist more visible, and ends up being safer, while not disrupting traffic more than they otherwise would by being on the right. My region has official safe riding guides explicitly endorsing this.

If there is a large shoulder or bike lane, then yes, they should ride there. But drivers often are unaware, or uncaring of hazards that may not be visible to them on the far right. Debris, potholes, door zone of parked cars, trucks, etc are all situations that occur frequently, and nessitate a move to the left.

Obviously this should be done by signalling and moving over during a gap, waiting if necessary, and this isn't always done. It's nothing drivers don't do on the regular either though. (It is more dangerous for the cyclist in question if they do it unsafely, but that's a risk he's taking on, the actual risk to you in a car is minor).

That does make them less useful, especially for the less athletic. Very hilly cities may see less ridership. E bikes of various assist levels can help a lot with this.

Also, even in hilly cities there are likely still recreational cyclists. In many cases they can be accommodated with infrastructure that doesn't appreciably slow down cars, or with infrastructure that benefits both cyclists and pedestrians (stuff like better mixed use paths, or better designed intersections). If the city is so hilly that very few people will cycle for practical purposes, that's definitely a reason to keep prioritizing cars in cases where there would be tradeoffs (narrow streets with no room for bike lanes, etc).

However many many cities, like the cited NYC, are quite flat, and this isn't an issue.

I think my caveat of "most places" was probably not strong enough. I'm many places you're correct, especially in bike-unfriendly areas.

But where I am at least the combination of "where practicable", minimum 1m passing distance, and lane widths means that it's virtually always legal to take the lane, as it's too narrow for a car to safely pass within it.

Drivers... Hate this, and tend to show little respect to cyclists asserting their right to the space, completely legally in the right.

I also try to avoid routes that require it, but unashamedly do so on sections where when the risk of a car clipping me in a narrow lane is too great.

While I may have been over confident about the illegality of the sidewalk rule in your area (definitely illegal most places I've lived/cycled, but not always the case) I think my point that at worst that kind of traffic infraction is as bad as going 20km/hr over.

He obviously has a higher risk tolerance than you, that doesn't mean it's a crazy unhinged decision to ride on the road.

Right! Why do people rage at cyclists and just casually drop stuff like this and hardly anyone bats an eye.

(I also think speed limits should be higher, but there are safe ways to do that - see Germany)

For the red lights and stop signs the argument is that these are not unsafe behaviors for the most part, on par with going 20km/hr over. It's explicitly legal in some jurisdictions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

And a cyclist taking the lane isn't even illegal! (In most places) He probably did that because it was safer at the time.

How do you feel about the Netherlands?

Every bike advocate brings them up, and for for good reason - they make all of these modes work, they all have a place in a modern city.

Obviously you can't copy paste their designs right away to current American cities, but you absolutely can move in that direction.

I mean nice separated bike lanes really help predictability! This should be something that drivers and cyclists should support as a win win (at least in sports where there is adequate space, which is often not quite the case).

This morning I saw a bicyclist veer into the street even though there was a dedicated empty bike lane and an empty sidewalk

You know most places it's illegal to ride on the sidewalk right? And taking a lane is perfectly legal behavior, often done if the bike lane is not safe (you may not be able to see why from your vantage point in a car).

Just pass him safely at the next opportunity. It's his road too.

In the context of NYC though, these points are largely invalid. It's dense, walkable, transitable, employers don't expect cars, grocery stores are close enough to walk to, let alone bike. If you must drive (which is entirely reasonable for some use cases) it's a pain because of the traffic (as it's so dense even a small portion of drivers cause congestion). Less than half of NYC even owns a car, something like ~20% in Manhattan.

For a significant number of trips, cycling can not just be an alternative quirky choice (like rollerblading), but the ideal mode - direct to your destination, cheap, faster than transit or a car (due to bypassing transfers or traffic), no need to find parking, and with some cargo or kid capacity if you have the right bike.

Safety is one of the big blockers though, which is why cycling advocates want more infrastructure.

And yes, this does trade off against drivability, but NYC is definitely not Pareto optimal in this regard - there's room to improve design for cyclists without significantly showing down drivers.

I agree 3 sucks, but it doesn't have to be as awkward as your making it out to be. Filling in the gaps doesn't make it impossible for cars to function.

You're thinking of God's existence as an empirical question whereas Lewis is not thinking about it in those terms and considers it a spiritual question, I mean you've got me there. I think it's clearly an empirical question, especially when talking about the Christian god.

Not whether some specific physical claim can be proven. Christianity tends to make a lot of physical claim - most Christians seem to believe miracles are possible, or that god can answer prayers.

Hm, thanks for that explanation, I see what he's going for and why he'd make both kinds of arguments. Kind of agree with him that similarity to other religions is not really the best angle to go for if you're trying to refute Christianity. (I guess I think there's a bit of an angle here -> it's weak evidence that Christianity is the result of the same process that makes humans tell pagan myths, but not really enough on it's own)

the atheist would alternative explanations to be more probable from the get go I would argue that most rational theists act and believe this way too. Don't most religious believe that true miracles, ones that clearly defy natural laws and are direct intervention by some higher power, are rare?

Sure the atheist is more sure that miracles don't exist, but that's kind of the definition of an atheist. They've seen less evidence that miracles are true, and no direct evidence, only testimony. And testimony is weak evidence, especially for questions core to people's identity and upbringing, where even if the person can be trusted, there's also clearly incentive avoid skepticism.

I fail to understand why the similarity of the gospels to myth, whether for, or against, or both(?) has relevance to whether or not god exists.

Like "humans tend to tell similar sorts of stories, with some differences" is a perfectly reasonable rebuttal to these kinds of arguments.