BIKE: Breaking the law

[Mike Dahmus]

Michael Bluejay wrote:

>
> On Apr 29, 2005, at 2:02 PM, Mike Dahmus wrote:
>
>> And anyways, motorists don't break the law to the degree that cyclists
>> do. Period. I'll refer you again to the "rolling stop vs.
>> blowing-the-stop-sign completely" argument, or the "running the orange
>> vs. running the middle of a red" argument. Let me know which one you'd
>> rather have this time ;+)
>
>
>
> (groan)  I'll say it again:  If you have to retort with, "Oh, it's 
> okay because motorists break the law *to a lesser extent* than 
> cyclists do," then I'll point out the obvious again:
>
>     If that's your argument, then you do NOT have a problem with 
> cyclists "breaking the law".  You have a problem with HOW they break 
> the law.  If that's the case, then why do you and the others claim 
> that the problem is that cyclists break the law, rather than HOW they 
> break the law?  Why do you say dog when you mean cat?
>
> A friend and I were discussing the movie the Shawshank Redemption, and 
> I said it was a bit violent for my tastes.  She replied, "No, it's not 
> violent, it's a great movie!"  I never said it wasn't a great movie, I 
> said it was VIOLENT.
>
> So why is it okay for Dahmus and the motorists to complain about 
> cyclists breaking the law when in their world it's okay to break the 
> law in certain circumstances?  Either you care about people breaking 
> the law or you don't.  If you do care, then it applies to everyone.  
> If you don't care, then you should stop saying you do. 

Warning, reductio ad absurdium alert.

Because it's not particularly useful to look at the world from the 
perspective that if you've ever exceeded the speed limit, you can't yell 
at people who murder their neighbors.

Reductio ab absurdium over.

Now take that down several thousand notches and get pragmatic for a bit. 
Politically, cyclists running stop signs just KILLS us with the 98% of 
people who don't ride for transportation. This is a fact - dispute 
gravity for all the better it'll do you at the same time. I get to hear 
it all the time from my suburban cow orkers and friends, and have 
documented cases where it resulted in changed votes at the UTC (or at 
least acceptable justification for negative votes). Whether this really 
hurts cyclists directly, or gives anti-cyclist voters a more palatable 
excuse for doing what they want to do anyways is irrelevant, since in 
the latter case, less palatable excuses for doing bad things to/for 
cyclists would in the end result in fewer actual bad things done to/for 
cyclists anyways.

You can complain all you want that it's not FAIR, since motorists do 
rolling stops, run the orange, and speed all the time, but the fact is 
that many people here who both drive and bike are able to distinguish 
between shades of gray (speeding not as bad as running the middle of a 
red light, for instance), and more importantly, those same 98% of people 
out there don't care whether or not the comparison is fair.

So even if I agreed with you (I don't) that it's not 'fair' to expect 
cyclists to obey stop signs and red lights, it doesn't matter, since you 
still have to convince the other 98%, and trust me, you'll never do that.

On the other hand, when I ride courteously and legally, I've had many 
instances where motorists have obviously appreciated it and indicated 
so. It couldn't possibly hurt to follow that example, could it?

- MD