NY Times article - Cycling will kill you!

On 11-12-2013, 01:33, Stephen Bauman wrote:
4. the car that's in the process of double parking will not have his
flashers on.

You mean there are people in the Big Apple who don't have this IDIOTIC
idea that a flasher makes any place a legal parking spot?

--
Wes Groleau

You're all individuals!
Yes, we're all individuals!
You're all different!
Yes, we are all different!
I'm not!
("Life of Brian")

On 11-12-2013, 14:03, Dan O wrote:
Anyway, I've consistently said nothing wrong with education, and
that it's great for those whom it may do any good; but lack of
*formal* education is*not* the root of all "evil".

No, but that human quality that makes education often futile comes
pretty close.

--
Wes Groleau

After the christening of his baby brother in church, Jason sobbed
all the way home in the back seat of the car. His father asked him
three times what was wrong. Finally, the boy replied, “That preacher
said he wanted us brought up in a Christian home, and I wanted to
stay with you guys."

On 11-12-2013, 06:27, John B. wrote:
wrote:
On 11-11-2013, 20:53, John B. wrote:
Well, Darwin was correct and perhaps it would be a good thing.

But on a more sober basis, humans are born with a very distinct sense
of danger - take a new born baby and lower them suddenly and quickly
and they will react - fear of falling apparently is instinctive.

I never tried it when they were "newborn" but my kids
thought it was fun when they were a few months old.

In essence you dropped the kid, except of course you caught him before
he crashed, and they didn't cry?

In fact, they smiled and sometimes even laughed.

Mine did.

Hmmm. Did they like roller coasters when they were older?


--
Wes Groleau

What kind of smiley is C:\ ?

On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 20:48:10 -0800, Dan
wrote:

John B. writes:

On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 09:37:58 -0800 (PST), Dan O
wrote:

On Monday, November 11, 2013 4:04:58 AM UTC-8, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 10 Nov 2013 19:44:10 -0800, Dan


snip


But jeez, unthinking adherence to rules and assumptive
decision making is Dumb and Dumber.

Right. Nobody should stop just because he sees one of those funny red
octagon signs.

I didn't word that so well (It just seemed clever 'cause of that movie),
but it was on the track. What it is is dumbing down the already dumb -
keeping it simple, which isn't all bad. It can keep people with lower
situational awareness and less effective social interaction (which takes
at least two anyway) from crashing into each other.

Just blast right through!


That can be done a couple of ways - dumb, or thinking. Since the
cops can't tell which is which, and society can't take the chance
of waiting to find out the hard way, I totally understand their need
to enforce uniformly.


Of course, but sometimes - maybe your glasses were dirty - when one
misjudges the oncoming traffic and blasts right out in front of
them.... and gets their name in the news. "Bicycle killed by speeding
motorists. John Doe, the driver of the car that struck and killed Jo
Dokes reportedly stated that, "I never saw him."


Again, as I wrote, "a couple of ways", I was thinking how it
can be done a *lot* of different ways. And I'm not a black
and white kind of guy at all; but I think it can stand thus:

If my glasses were dirty or something and I "misjudge" such
that I make the news... you can categorize that in the "dumb"
column, since I obviously wasn't thinking adequately.

I'm okay with that.

If you made the news that a way you wouldn't have any say in how the
news presented it :-)

But I think that the purpose of many of the traffic laws are there to
get us all playing with the same rules. There is nothing in the
sacraments that says the guy on the right has the right of way but if
that rule didn't exist, or people flaunted it at will, it would be a
bit chaotic out there.

--
Cheers,

John B.

On Wed, 13 Nov 2013 02:20:38 -0500, Wes Groleau
wrote:

On 11-12-2013, 06:27, John B. wrote:
wrote:
On 11-11-2013, 20:53, John B. wrote:
Well, Darwin was correct and perhaps it would be a good thing.

But on a more sober basis, humans are born with a very distinct sense
of danger - take a new born baby and lower them suddenly and quickly
and they will react - fear of falling apparently is instinctive.

I never tried it when they were "newborn" but my kids
thought it was fun when they were a few months old.

In essence you dropped the kid, except of course you caught him before
he crashed, and they didn't cry?

In fact, they smiled and sometimes even laughed.

Mine did.

Hmmm. Did they like roller coasters when they were older?

Hmmm.. Mine didn't. they used to like being held and sort of rocked up
and down but if you were carrying and just dropped it (caught it
before it hit the floor) it looked like they were having a heart
attack - big spasm and their mouth opened, eyes closed and WHAAAAAAAA.
(it upset my wife quite considerable too. Made her think I didn't know
how to carry a baby and so she took over management of the entire baby
care department.)
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Wed, 13 Nov 2013 08:51:59 +1100, James wrote:

On 13/11/13 05:58, davethedave wrote:
On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 20:22:48 -0500, Wes Groleau wrote:

On 11-11-2013, 20:08, John B. wrote:
wrote:
Actually around here nobody does. It's amazing how many people you
see looking a bit confused in a broken car parked in somebody’s wall
or a shop. Those funny coloured 3 light things also seem to be a bit
misunderstood.

Which of course is why we need driver training :-)

Or maybe driver beating.

No. Driver training I think.

To get a driving licence here you have to sit some kind of exam about
traffic signs, lights etc. Really basic stuff. Then you have to drive a
car about 200 yards in a straight line using all the gears and stop...

That's it!

Then you have a licence and can learn to drive or not. This high
standard of training makes the roads very interesting.

Where is "here" again? I'd like to note to avoid, or at least be on
full crash avoidance consciousness!

Sunny Turkey.

waves from the Med.
--
davethedave

On Wed, 13 Nov 2013 09:22:41 +0700, John B. wrote:

On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 20:58:25 +0200, davethedave
wrote:

On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 20:22:48 -0500, Wes Groleau wrote:

On 11-11-2013, 20:08, John B. wrote:
wrote:
Actually around here nobody does. It's amazing how many people you
see looking a bit confused in a broken car parked in somebodyÂ’s
wall
or a shop. Those funny coloured 3 light things also seem to be a bit
misunderstood.

Which of course is why we need driver training :-)

Or maybe driver beating.

No. Driver training I think.

To get a driving licence here you have to sit some kind of exam about
traffic signs, lights etc. Really basic stuff. Then you have to drive a
car about 200 yards in a straight line using all the gears and stop...

That's it!

Then you have a licence and can learn to drive or not. This high
standard of training makes the roads very interesting.

Over here it was traditional to just bribe the Motor Vehicle guy. No
test. And, I can't say that our untested drivers are any crazier then
your tested ones :-)

It all seems to work fine in it's chaotic little way but when you
introduce... Shall we say more European traffic expectations it gets a
bit confusing.


--
davethedave

On 11/12/2013 6:07 PM, John B. wrote:

Yes and there have been, from time to time, some dissatisfaction over
that. I remember when I lived in Riverside there were questions raised
as to why the retired folks (I got this from my retired neighbor :-)
had to pay for schools. Not that the local government ever had any
intent to retreat on the tax issue but they did scrabble around and
come up with "answers" as to why.

Where I live, school parcel taxes usually exempt seniors even though
they are allowed to vote for or against them. It's rare for a school
parcel tax to fail because the only thing keeping home values at
ridiculous levels is the perceived quality of the local schools, and the
seniors don't want home values falling any more than anyone else.

Also, since the seniors bought there houses decades ago, they're
protected from rising property taxes by proposition 13 which limits
assessed value increases to 2% per year. So one house can have taxes of
$800/year and the house next door can have taxes of $18,000 per year.
What's patently unfair is that these low assessments are passed on to
children that inherit the property.

The school parents in my city joke about the fact that all over the
world people have this perception of what an amazing city we live
in--until they actually come here and see how junky our city, and
especially the schools, actually are. Then it's like "this is it, WTF?"

On Tuesday, November 12, 2013 11:34:09 PM UTC-5, Dan wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

Of course, Portland did implement [bike boxes], illegally at first, then with back-room, string-pulling retroactive permission - permission that still required collecting data. And the data is in. And it shows that the bike boxes did NOT work, but instead, INCREASED the very type of crash they were intended to prevent.

I stood at the corner of one of those downhill bike boxes
last time I was in Portland. Cars yielded, bicyclists were
cautious of right hooks (they've added markings way up the
block warning bicyclists to watch out for right hooks - not
that those should be necessary but... ), flocks of bicyclists
poured down the hill at rush hour with _no conflicts_.

Surely, you're not implying that your "one time" observation trumps a year's worth of disciplined data collection?

I'm against door zone bike lanes. We know (or we _should_ know) that they guide cyclists into hazardous spaces. Do you _really_ think it's a good idea to instruct trusting riders to ride where a door can pop open in their path?

I'm against bike lanes that tell cyclists to pass cars on the right where those cars can turn to their right.

They only "guide" or "tell" unthinking rule-followers.

What would you say if a straight-ahead lane for motorists was placed to the right of a right-turn-only lane for motorists, complete with large arrows telling the person in the rightmost lane that it was just fine to go straight? Would you excuse the design, because every motorist should know to disobey the arrows?

BTW, the stripe ends at the intersection (dipwad).

Your fourth grade mentality is leaking out again, Dan. But where I sit now, I'm within half a mile of a rather new bike lane that runs right up to the intersection. Almost all cars turn right at that intersection, but the bike lane is to their right. Don't pretend these design problems have gone away.

I could go on. But ISTM that most facilities advocates do no more thinking than "Oooh, we have to be safe! And oooh, they've done something special for bikes, so now I feel safe!"

Or alternately, "Actual levels of safety aren't important. It's _perceived_ safety that matters, so we can get more butts on bikes and save the world!!! So it's OK to put the cyclists in more danger, as long as we fool them about it!" I happen to think that's immoral. It would never be allowed in any similar field, like medicine, plant safety, architectural design, etc.

Much of his views make exceptionally good sense. It's just that
on the whole he goes off the rails.

When you can discuss facilities logically, based on the real physics and psychology of traffic interactions, only then will you be capable of judging when I'm "off the rails."

Meanwhile, we're still trying to get you to see that it's not advisable to ride while drunk, ride facing traffic, ride at night without lights, do wheelies and jumps across intersections, zoom on and off sidewalks at will, etc. At this point, you're really not qualified to judge much about traffic engineering.


- Frank Krygowski

On 14/11/13 01:25, davethedave wrote:
On Wed, 13 Nov 2013 08:51:59 +1100, James wrote:

On 13/11/13 05:58, davethedave wrote:
On Mon, 11 Nov 2013 20:22:48 -0500, Wes Groleau wrote:

On 11-11-2013, 20:08, John B. wrote:
wrote:
Actually around here nobody does. It's amazing how many people you
see looking a bit confused in a broken car parked in somebody’s wall
or a shop. Those funny coloured 3 light things also seem to be a bit
misunderstood.

Which of course is why we need driver training :-)

Or maybe driver beating.

No. Driver training I think.

To get a driving licence here you have to sit some kind of exam about
traffic signs, lights etc. Really basic stuff. Then you have to drive a
car about 200 yards in a straight line using all the gears and stop...

That's it!

Then you have a licence and can learn to drive or not. This high
standard of training makes the roads very interesting.

Where is "here" again? I'd like to note to avoid, or at least be on
full crash avoidance consciousness!

Sunny Turkey.

waves from the Med.

Ah, my Bro and his family just got home from a holiday in Turkey!

--
JS