In article said:I think describing this in terms of "higher"/"lower" is a bad thing
because it automatically leads to this kind of fatalism, and
"majority"/"minority" or "us"/"other" is sufficient to explain the
observed behaviour. If J Random Motorist decides to try cycling (and
clearly, many do/have) he might view it as new risky behaviour, but I
don't think he's going to view it as taking a step down in the class
system. Witness the Evening Standard's about-face on the subject when
it suddenly realised "they" are "us"
Using terminology like "higher" and "lower" is important because it is
the terminology of caste systems. It doesn't imply any moral right to
be higher or lower; it describes the priorities that are artificially
maintained by those societies that indulge in caste systems.
There are two surprising things about Gareth's explanation:
1) it both matches and explains most of the motorist and cyclist
behaviours I observe, day by day.
2) in the group in which it is posted, which usually descends at the
slightest provocation into predictable monster threads in which
almost every individual has a pre-determined arguing position to
work from ("evil taxi drivers" / "bloody red-light-shooting cyclists"
etc. etc.), his post was remarkable in managing to hypothesise a
systematically unfair-to-cyclists system without being attacked by
all the usual suspects. Indeed it appeared to be accepted as
in-principle valid (with a variety of reservations) by people on both
sides of the divide.
-patrick.