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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28507 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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Forester claims pretty plainly in his book Effective Cycling that an actually existing credible threat of severe punishment effectively deters truly negligent and malicious driving, which I dunno about. Every so often a motorist kills a cyclist and gets off remarkably easy.

The threat does deter malicious driving, and negligent driving to some extent, but it deters it only, it does not eliminate it. And as I said in the previous thread, motorists who kill anyone (not just cyclists) and aren't drunk or on drugs and don't leave the scene usually get off without any criminal consequences. This is likely an effect of nearly everyone driving; no matter how often someone whips up a moral panic and gets consequences increased, the fact that people who drive all the time (including judges, jurors, legislators, and prosecutors) don't want "one mistake and I get raped in prison" hanging over their heads every time they get in the car tends to keep it from taking full effect.

Another thing about vehicular biking is, outside of fairly small areas of cities, is the choice is between that and no biking at all. There's no reasonable way to build up an entire separated bicycle infrastructure covering even a metro area, let along a large country; the cost per user would be enormous. Some bicycle advocates are indeed arrogant enough to demand this, but aside from a few token "share the road" signs, it ain't going to happen.

"one mistake and I get raped in prison"

Quoted from Effective Cycling, not necessarily endorsed:

Americans have been raised to believe that the greatest danger to cyclists is same-direction motor traffic. Therefore, the motorist who sees a cyclist on the road ahead of him believes that this is a moment of great peril. The motorist thinks that some strange event is likely to occur that will cause him to hit the cyclist. Because whatever it is that is likely to occur, it won’t be my fault. The typical person sees himself as driving along, minding his own business, when there is a loud crash and—“Oh my God, I’ve hit a bicycle!” That is how they have been taught that these accidents happen: an act of God or an evil magic at work. Therefore, in this type of event the cyclist is seen to be more at fault than the motorist.

Forester would dispute the factual truth of the bold based mostly on the Kenneth Cross study. Of course, equilibrium effects and so on....

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