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Children's toys honestly have no place on the roads. My hometown has a completely separate network of cycle paths that don't interact with the roads at all except at crossings, and it's honestly much better. Keeps them out of the way and out of danger. I realise you can't exactly retrofit cities for this though.
I am resentful every time a road lane gets removed to be turned into an abandoned bike lane. Stopping people from using their overwhelmingly preferred mode of transportation in order to give space over to an unpopular one for... what I can only assume are idealistic political reasons instead of practical ones, strikes me as foolish at best. The approach to trying to make people take up cycling seems to be to just make everything else worse; but it's not going to counteract the fact that most people just don't want to arrive at their destination sweaty and/or weather-beaten with helmet hair.
This is why drivers are resentful of cyclists, at any rate. They're the favoured children at the moment.
Sigh. This is 101 golden-child behavior. If cyclists got 1% of the attention that cars do, you'd have the utopia meme in real life.
I agree. This + single lane neighborhood streets are the best.
Given the rates of car accidents, helmets are more useful if you're driving than on a bike. I maintain my anti-helmet stance on bikes. Good for kids and long weekend bike-athons. disqualifying for commuting.
I bike for a leisurely 5 miles to work everyday. It is no more sweaty than a 1 mile walk. You don't get sweaty unless you live in a swamp. Biking for commutes is interspersed with transit. Even in biking utopias, the majority never bikes more than 5 miles per trip. And I'm not even fit.
Good. I've tried to make drivers see the total win-win that transit + bikes are for drivers and bikers alike. But I'm spent. Our lot are officially at war.
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Rather cars have no place in cities, they take up a tonne of space and make the area around them worse for everyone. Walking and cycling are the natural way of moving around a city and cities should be built around walking first and cycling secondly. Obese people in multi-tonne vehicles isn't practicle, cycling is. That cycling is impractical where you live is caused by cars making every mode of transport impractical including driving.
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It's not a surprise that people don't ride bikes anywhere when you have to share the road with people who essentially have carte blanche to kill you with impunity The lack of consequences for killing or injuring bikers casts serious doubt on the claim that cyclists are the "favoured children".
If you cause a fatal crash, have a valid license, aren't drunk or on drugs, and don't leave the scene, the chances of you going down for vehicular homicide are extremely low, regardless of the means of transportation of the victim. Cyclist-activists crying about this when it happens to cyclists is special pleading.
Now, now, even if you are drunk and unlicensed and have 19 moving violations you might get away with probation after not even being arrested before a media circus starts up. If you have a license, your fatal booze cruise will probably just end up with a slap on the wrist.
It's not really special pleading because drivers are much better protected against other drivers than cyclists are. Pedestrians are similarly unprotected, but they usually are not directly on the road at least.
I cannot find any indication alcohol was involved in this incident. But it's not any different with drivers who kill other people in cars.
That's exactly special pleading, due to being more vulnerable. You want drivers to be held to a higher standard when they kill cyclists as opposed to killing people in cars.
SEP
IEP
An argument about special pleading won't get resolved without showing the supposed principles are inconsistently applied.
What is the standard sentencing for car drivers who kill other people in cars? Is it different if they kill pedestrians? If The_Nybbler is right, the driver gets probation for both, and the principle is consistent. (Consistently callous.) One could raise the sentencing waterline for all kinds of vehicle-caused deaths, too.
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You're right, I misread it.
Wow, that's what I want? I'm sure you won't have trouble quoting the part where I said that, then.
Sure:
The non-bulverist reading of my comment is:
I think it's pretty obvious that I was not, in fact, arguing for stricter punishment for killing a cyclist than for killing a motorist. That's a motivated reading if I ever saw one.
To make it completely obvious - if you kill someone while driving, there should be consequences.
And my response is that if you kill someone while driving and you aren't drunk or high and don't leave the scene, chances of criminal consequences are low regardless of whether the person killed is a cyclist, a pedestrian, or someone in a motor vehicle. It's not different for cyclists.
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