Yeah!
posted by Megan at 12:28 PM
Previous Posts
- And I have high hopes for an Obama presidency.
- Wasn't me.
- Go to work!
- One put out cigarettes for guests? Awesome.
- Ask me about the big black wolf spiders.
- Not defensive.
- In one train ride...
- What a strange thought.
- Back on my bike! Almonds in bloom! Snow on the S...
- I would pay it twice over.
13 Comments:
Oh, that is excellent. I am a cyclist, in London. And now I am sort of like a moonwalking bear, too.
We can be both!!
I know this isn't going to be a popular opinion, but seriously, pedestrians, and cyclists have to pay more attention to cars too.
A lot of cyclists blow stop signs and stop lights. And will come up on your blind spot, on the street, or on the sidewalk, or in a cross walk, really fast, without even considering what the car is going to do.
And, California pedestrians are idiots. I've never seen people so willing to blindly step in front of a moving car.
It's ridiculous to push all the responsibility on motorists.
Justin
Justin -
Without paying attention to the legalities or moral obligations involved, if a car hits a cyclist, it will be dented. The cyclist may suffer serious injury or die.
Drivers should pay attention. Cyclists must.
That's probably why the ad was aimed at drivers - cyclists get enough reminders of why they need to pay attention in their daily cycling.
That's also why I've never quite been comfortable cycling on city streets.
The responsibility goes both ways. While car drivers should be aware of cyclists, and know how to behave around them, cyclists also need to follow the generally agreed upon rules of the road. That means stopping at stop lights, signaling before turning, riding on the road rather than on the sidewalk. Car drivers would be much more comfortable around cyclists if the cyclists behaved in a predictable manner, and vice versa. When we learned to drive, this was called "driving defensively." Assume everyone on the road is going to do the wrong thing, and plan for that; the same goes for cyclists. Don't assume that a car is going straight just because they're didn't turn on the turn signal, and don't assume they're turning just because they've got a turn signal on. Don't assume they're going to stop just because the light is red, and don't assume they're going to go just because the light is green.
As for pedestrians, I don't even use the cross walk because I don't trust cars to respect it. I'm much safer crossing the street halfway down the block, where I fully expect the cars to be barreling toward me at 40 miles per hour. Crosswalks give a false sense of security, and I've seen enough cars blast through red lights at full speed to not trust my safety to a pair of white lines painted on the road.
Oh my God! At first I thought it was a joke. Then I went back and watched it again, and it WAS there the first time!
Now I'm chagrined and angry. You bikists will pay for making me feel so foolish.
Actually, the analogy there is probably more apt than they realized. With everything else going on that drivers are responsible for, and need to pay attention to, maybe throwing dancing bears in the mix isn't a great idea.
That's really the problem with the share the road people, they generally don't see the driver's side of things. They want to push all responsibility on the people in the cars.
Yes, a cyclist is more likely to be killed in an accident with a car. But that doesn't excuse the behavior of a lot of cyclists, or pedestrians. They need to be looking out for themselves and they're generally not. Especially in California.
Justin
Well I flunked the test, not noticing our ursine pal at all during the first viewing. And this is despite knowing that there was likely to be some sort of trick to the test.
My guess is that the bear was hard to notice because its color (black) was the same as the uniforms of the team we weren't trying to watch. Had it been a white polar bear we would have noticed it.
Oh, I don't mean to say that cyclists don't bear their share of responsibility. Just that, due to the lethality differences, they are already reminded more forcefully and more frequently than drivers, making drivers a better target for an ad campaign like this.
Yeah, awesome if you have female privilege. Typical selfish feminist, wholly incapable of empathy for her brother:
"Drivers pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than when overtaking bare-headed cyclists, increasing the risk of a collision, the research has found.
Dr Ian Walker, a traffic psychologist from the University of Bath in the UK, used a bicycle fitted with a computer and an ultrasonic distance sensor to record data from over 2,500 overtaking motorists in Salisbury and Bristol.
Across the board, drivers passed an average of 8.5 cm (3 1/3 inches) closer with the helmet than without
...
To test another theory, Dr Walker donned a long wig to see whether there was any difference in passing distance when drivers thought they were overtaking what appeared to be a female cyclist.
Whilst wearing the wig, drivers gave him an average of 14 centimetres (5.5 inches) more space when passing."
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-09/uob-wah091106.php
Whilst wearing the wig, drivers gave him an average of 14 centimetres (5.5 inches) more space when passing."
Well, you guys think we can't drive. You probably think we can't bike either. ;)
Lots of buzz about just this (biking) issue in Chicago right now based on new laws with stiffer penalties against cyclist-endangering drivers. daley's on a kick to make this the most bikeable city in the universe (which i wholly support). it's already a great place to ride - especially coming from nyc, which felt like a death trap.
-A
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/21/MNU3VOB22.DTL&tsp=1
Justin
Post a Comment
<< Home