Resound wrote:
> <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
> >
> > I run reds regularly. I call it civil disobedience. Call me a ********.
> > If I get cleaned up, it's my fault, pure and simple. If I want less
> > risk, I'll be more cautious, and only run a few simple ones.
> >
>
> Firstly, there are enough cyclists out there who clearly need traffic lights
> to avoid being cleaned up that not running reds as a law should make sense
> right there. The point of laws is that you don't ignore them based of your
> personal evaluation of when it's reasonable to do so. If it was otherwise
> then the people who most badly need those laws are the ones who'd never
> observe them. I'm rather tempted to suggest that that's the case with
> bicycles running red lights at the moment. The notion that it's your risk
> and not anyone else's just doesn't wash. How about the person on another
> bike or motorbike who goes down hitting or avoiding you? How about the
> person who winds up injured and/or traumatised and/or well out of pocket
> when you bounce off their front guard and into their wind screen? How about
> the cost to the community in both dollars and physical resources with
> regards to the emergency services who scrape you off the road and cart you
> off to hospital? And finally, as has been mentioned in this group a huge
> number of times, how about the dozen people who watch you blow through that
> red light each time and mentally reinforce their pre-conceived notion that
> cyclists are dangerous idiots. Don't even think about saying that they won't
> apply it to all cyclists because not all cyclists are the same. When you're
> not part of a minority, there's a tendency to treat that minority as a
> homogenous group. Non-cyclists aren't interested in making the mental effort
> to give us the benefit of the doubt, especially when being mentally lazy
> lets them see another data point to reinforce their fondly held prejudices.
>
> Oh, and before I forget:
>
> ********.
SO now I've got all the prejudiced, insurance-premium-up-stumping ,
tax-paying, cringers in the corner of the transport system that the
motoring lobby allows us out in the open, what have you gained by
thinking differently for the microsecond you allowed yourselves before
heaping invective on the devil's advocate I was playing?
Nothin'.
You're locked into the status quo.
You won't think differently about traffic - how it's organised, who the
present organisation benefits, why cyclists are victimised, why we as
cyclists get a gravel and glass strewn half a metre all to ourselves
whilst trucks, cars and those incredibly annoying scooters can
imperiously put our lives at significantly more danger than theirs by
simply looking away for half a second.
SO take back the dead bits of the traffic cycle. Show EVERYONE how much
dead time and unweildiness there is in this regimentation for the
benefit of multinational companies who make big things that kill
people. I'm not talking about Kona or Shogun here. Or just submit to
all the little bits of non-cycling friendly traffic regulation that add
up, in their entirety, to unjust laws. The ones that stop people riding
bikes by making our *commonly owned* outdoors a safe place for cars
(made by *privately owned* Ford,GMH, etc., yes, incredibly
human-focused organisations) first, and people next, if at all. Are we
being screwed? Yes.
And keep self-righteously calling everyone who disagrees with you a
********. It just underlines the fact, in motorists eyes, that all
cyclists are stupid. Yes, I'll keep on running all the red lights that
I think are runnable, you feel free to arrest me (if you're entitled,
and can catch me), yell at me, call me a ********, laugh/mourn over my
mangled body/corpse, or whatever. I'm not stupid. I ride in traffic
every day, and have done for 20 years in Melbourne. I think I'm doing
all right (touch wood) having not been hospitalised yet. I've been
close-called and minorly injured by cars ostensibly obeying all the
written road rules many times. The medium is the message. Two tons of
metal with a captive occupant is built to not care, really, about
anything except a quicker way to get from here to there, and traffic
lights are just (grudgingly admitted as necessary) impediments,
homicidally flouted when possible, to most motorists, not the
touchstones to a gloriously safe future which some posters here seem to
think they are. I've never heard of a cyclist killing a motorist whilst
colliding at an intersection. I'll use all the skills I developed
growing up in the country, where there were about 2 traffic lights
within a 100 k radius, to assess the dangers of a road situation. You
continue thinking along the little tracks that Mr Toyota and Mr Ford
built, and are happy for you to think along.
MH