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Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
It's not as simple as that filth. It's just a matter of expectation. I expect cars and taxis to act a particular way in Manhattan. I know that taxis will cross 3 lanes of traffic to catch a fare. I know that cars will make left turns from the right lane in heavily trafficked area.
If I'm crossing the ONE way street I'm not expecting ANY moving traffic to be coming at me from a different direction than the ONE way that all the vehicles are coming from. I can't tell you how many times I've been almost hit or yelled at to "Watch it!" from a biker going down the ONE way street from the wrong direction. Apparently according to your posts, I'm the asshole for doing the normal codified behavior, and the deviating behavior is the one that's in the right.
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Right, but if this is happening enough to justify your ire, then perhaps you ought to reevaluate your expectations, because they are clearly inadequate.
And if you think I think you're the asshole for only looking one way when you cross a one way street, then you've misread me. I realize that cyclists can be assholes. What I've also been trying to point out is that being an asshole is a human property, not a cyclist property, and so making the distinction between cyclists and drivers with respect to assholish behavior is silly.
The chance that someone is an asshole increases dramatically if that person criticizes cyclists for not obeying traffic laws while s/he routinely disobeys traffic laws. Do you ever jaywalk? As far as I can tell, 99.999999% of all drivers who criticize cyclists for not obeying traffic laws fall into this category.
But I appreciate the fact that you've brought up what this driver/cyclist conflict is really about, which is that drivers and cyclists tend to have differing expectations for how cyclists should behave.
I predict that if expectations were to become more realistic, and if folks on either side stopped hiding behind self righteous generalizations, that the problem would largely cease to exist.
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So this group is trying to do something about it.
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I just want to note the irony in the fact that the article quotes a pedestrian as an authority on predictable behavior. I don't know how many times I've had to swerve to avoid oblivious pedestrians. Even so, I would never say that I don't respect pedestrians as a group.
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for the benefit of those others to know what the laws are...
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From what you said above it seemed to me that you were of the mind that breaking the law is okay, as long as you personally aren't surprised by it. Maybe you should have listed your expectations?
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re: the rolling stops, well cars are most efficient in the same manner and for the same reasons. Why wouldn't you give them the same kind of pass?
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It depends on what you mean by efficiency. Cyclists actually produce the energy used to propel their bicycles. Drivers don't. In terms of personal energy expenditure, momentum represents a much larger personal energy expenditure when one is on a bicycle than when one is driving a car.