What my bike has taught me about white privilege.

[Jolly_Penguin]

Suppose I know exactly how two people fit into each of the above categories. eg person 1 is a 50 year old, black, university educated, heterosexual female etc and person 2 is a 20 year old white male homosexual who is not at college etc. What further assumptions, if any should I make about them because of the way they are categorized? How, if at all, should I treat them differently because of the different ways they are categorized?

Policy, practice and narrative got us into this mess and policy, practice and narrative are what gets us out. Outcomes matter and where the outcomes don't match the input, we take that to mean there is a problem. We don't assume we know what the problem is but we can not be so frightened as to choose to deny its existence rather than find cause makes us feel bad.

You seemed like you were about to, but you didn't actually answer EricK's question that you quoted. I too would like to see your answer. What assumptions should I make and what actions should I take if I know what Eric has said about the two people.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Policy, practice and narrative got us into this mess and policy, practice and narrative are what gets us out. Outcomes matter and where the outcomes don't match the input, we take that to mean there is a problem. We don't assume we know what the problem is but we can not be so frightened as to choose to deny its existence rather than find cause makes us feel bad.

You seemed like you were about to, but you didn't actually answer EricK's question that you quoted. I too would like to see your answer. What assumptions should I make and what actions should I take if I know what Eric has said about the two people.

What assumptions should you make about an individual when the thread is about the nature of the system?

I don't think you get what white privilege is.

First of all, I'm not your mother and you are not twelve and even if both those things were true, I would hope I had reared you better than to go around making assumptions about people with no information other than physical attributes, and that you would take time to at least exchange pleasantries with a person before stuffing them into a box marked "good" or "bad."

Second, if you are interested in privilege, white or any other flavor, know the history of society you are studying. And not just the one they teach in the 11th grade.

Start there.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

No, you're not my mother. My mother was capable of engaging in conversation without being snide and rude.

And you still haven't answered the question EricK asked. You were talking about policies and practices. What exactly do you plan to change? What policies do you want in place? We both know what you are avoiding saying, and it actually plays directly into "making assumptions about people with no information other than physical attributes", which is probably why EricK asked.

 

[Juma]

I already did explain it by highlighting that skin color is not the reliable determinant of privilege any more than of bike riding, but your racist ideology blinds you to understanding how using a person's skin color to determine who is privileged over whom is definitionally racist (and that is exactly what the use of the term does).

To recognize a fact is not racist.

None says that blacks are underprivileged just by being blacks. Noone says that being black is in itself the cause to being underprivileged.The cause is how blacks are treated. I can understand if this fine nuance is beyond you.

Blacks (as a general term, not individually) are said to be underprivilieged because it is an easily observed fact that they are.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I am not using skin color to determine anything.

The effects of a history that I had not control over are not mine to determine.

In the OP, the author goes out of his way to say repeatedly, that car drivers through no intent or plan of their own enjoy the benefits of an infrastructure designed for them and not so much cyclists.

No one so far has disproven that although some have tried to distract the discussion from it.

its the system not the individuals in the system

This has been explained throughout this thread and asking the same questions over and over will not change the answer.

It ain't about you.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

In the OP, the author goes out of his way to say repeatedly, that car drivers through no intent or plan of their own enjoy the benefits of an infrastructure designed for them and not so much cyclists.

A fundamental problem with the analogy is that bicycles and cars are very different in their very nature, and categorically, so You rightly need different rules for them. This has little if anything to do with how we perceive them. Bicycles by their very nature are slow and frail. They have very different needs and abilities than cars do, and discrimination is important between the two.

This analogy would be far better made with the handicapped.

 

[Jokodo]

In the OP, the author goes out of his way to say repeatedly, that car drivers through no intent or plan of their own enjoy the benefits of an infrastructure designed for them and not so much cyclists.

A fundamental problem with the analogy is that bicycles and cars are very different in their very nature, and categorically, so You rightly need different rules for them. This has little if anything to do with how we perceive them. Bicycles by their very nature are slow and frail. They have very different needs and abilities than cars do, and discrimination is important between the two.

This analogy would be far better made with the handicapped.

The analogy is quite good - a big part of the problem cyclists face is that drivers are unaware of their needs, and sometimes (including in this thread) actively refuse to learn about them.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

It's the word white.

Any thing that follows the word white, (other than sale, elephant, out, heat, light, or pages) evokes a defensive reaction.

I don't know how to stop that, how to heal that wound, how to ease that fear.

 

[laughing dog]

From an opinion piece on white privilege (source: http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/274024681.html):

My own experience raising a black son has been an eye-opener. I have watched him be harassed by police at the end of the driveway — they insisted he put a key in the door to prove he lived in our (slightly) upscale neighborhood. They didn’t think he had business being there. After graduating high school, three days before his 18th birthday he was hauled off to the Juvenile Detention Center for breaking curfew; his white counterparts were told to go home. I once got a call from a middle-school teacher who confessed that she was scared of him because he was tall and “he looked like a man.” He was enrolled in an International Baccalaureate program. He was 13.

These are some, but not all, of the incidents he’s suffered. As he approached manhood, they became more frequent, and the potential consequences grew more severe.

My white son has never been exposed to this kind of treatment. When he gets in trouble, he is gently reprimanded, reminded that he’s a role model, and told to go home and think about it.

My black son has been harassed by police for sitting in public spaces.

My white son has not.

 

[doubtingt]

I already did explain it by highlighting that skin color is not the reliable determinant of privilege any more than of bike riding, but your racist ideology blinds you to understanding how using a person's skin color to determine who is privileged over whom is definitionally racist (and that is exactly what the use of the term does).

To recognize a fact is not racist.

None says that blacks are underprivileged just by being blacks. Noone says that being black is in itself the cause to being underprivileged.The cause is how blacks are treated. I can understand if this fine nuance is beyond you.

Blacks (as a general term, not individually) are said to be underprivilieged because it is an easily observed fact that they are.

It is a fact that blacks have lower average GPAs, SAT scores, and IQ scores.

Is it therefore not at racist to use the term "black idiocy" to refer to this?

 

[doubtingt]

A fundamental problem with the analogy is that bicycles and cars are very different in their very nature, and categorically, so You rightly need different rules for them. This has little if anything to do with how we perceive them. Bicycles by their very nature are slow and frail. They have very different needs and abilities than cars do, and discrimination is important between the two.

This analogy would be far better made with the handicapped.

The analogy is quite good - a big part of the problem cyclists face is that drivers are unaware of their needs, and sometimes (including in this thread) actively refuse to learn about them.

Cyclists are reckless a@@holes, and the danger to them is in very large part self-induced by their own actions and failure to take responsibility for this because they are so obsessed with self-righteous indignation and fueling their victim-mentality.

 

[Trausti]

The analogy is quite good - a big part of the problem cyclists face is that drivers are unaware of their needs, and sometimes (including in this thread) actively refuse to learn about them.

Cyclists are reckless a@@holes, and the danger to them is in very large part self-induced by their own actions and failure to take responsibility for this because they are so obsessed with self-righteous indignation and fueling their victim-mentality.

Whether or not someone adheres to the "white privilege" catechism, the bicycle v car analogy is just really bad.

 

[dystopian]

The analogy is quite good - a big part of the problem cyclists face is that drivers are unaware of their needs, and sometimes (including in this thread) actively refuse to learn about them.

Cyclists are reckless a@@holes, and the danger to them is in very large part self-induced by their own actions and failure to take responsibility for this because they are so obsessed with self-righteous indignation and fueling their victim-mentality.

And it is your kind of mentality, not the mentality of cyclists, which is the reason that the US has many times the cycling fatalities per miles traveled than the Netherlands. You put the onus on cyclists to take responsibility for their own safety; we place the responsibility on society as a whole, leading to a far safer traffic environment for everyone involved and far fewer deaths and injuries. Your mentality might appeal more to your personal anger issues, but ours is far more practical, and better for your blood pressure too. Ironically, when it comes to race, this same argument might well apply.

 

[Trausti]

Cyclists are reckless a@@holes, and the danger to them is in very large part self-induced by their own actions and failure to take responsibility for this because they are so obsessed with self-righteous indignation and fueling their victim-mentality.

And it is your kind of mentality, not the mentality of cyclists, which is the reason that the US has many times the cycling fatalities per miles traveled than the Netherlands. You put the onus on cyclists to take responsibility for their own safety; we place the responsibility on society as a whole, leading to a far safer traffic environment for everyone involved and far fewer deaths and injuries. Your mentality might appeal more to your personal anger issues, but ours is far more practical, and better for your blood pressure too. Ironically, when it comes to race, this same argument might well apply.

US cities are not like Amsterdam. As others in this thread have remarked, cyclists here often ignore stop signs and red lights, weave through cars, dart out from seemingly nowhere, and can slow traffic dramatically - which can be dangerous to both the cyclist and motorist. In the US, the conduct of cyclists do not make them sympathetic figures. If you want to persuade people to your argument, at least pick a theme which doesn't draw immediate ire.

 

[Nexus]

You put the onus on cyclists to take responsibility for their own safety; we place the responsibility on society as a whole, leading to a far safer traffic environment for everyone involved and far fewer deaths and injuries.

I can't remember where I saw this perhaps a documentary but Denmark has a very good philosophy regarding traffic safety. That don't solely rely on traffic fines or laws to prevent accidents. They also redesign the roads in trouble spots. Obviously their solution based approach works better than simply trying to punish and blame motorists.

 

[Angry Floof]

Cyclists are reckless a@@holes, and the danger to them is in very large part self-induced by their own actions and failure to take responsibility for this because they are so obsessed with self-righteous indignation and fueling their victim-mentality.

And it is your kind of mentality, not the mentality of cyclists, which is the reason that the US has many times the cycling fatalities per miles traveled than the Netherlands. You put the onus on cyclists to take responsibility for their own safety; we place the responsibility on society as a whole, leading to a far safer traffic environment for everyone involved and far fewer deaths and injuries. Your mentality might appeal more to your personal anger issues, but ours is far more practical, and better for your blood pressure too. Ironically, when it comes to race, this same argument might well apply.

Note how vehemently cyclists are demonized here, but no one has demonized cars, car driving, or car drivers to make their points. In fact, it's been made pretty clear that car drivers, no matter how myopic or thoughtless they may sometimes be in their comfortable place in the system, are not bad people, or stupid, or miscreants, or generalized as anything other than people.

 

[doubtingt]

Thanks, doubingt, for demonstrating beyond reasonable doubt that you're incapable of putting yourself in someone else's shoes for even a minute. QED.

1 in 10 cyclists stopping at stop signs is overly generous toward cyclists. Just this morning, in the 1/2 mile that I was driving on surface streets I saw 2 bicyclists and 1 ran a stop sign and the other ran a red light. In contrast, I've seen maybe 1-2 cars blow through stop signs and lights in the past year (I'm not talking racing to beat the yellow, I am talking just looking to see if there is traffic moving on the cross street and acting light the sign or light is not even there).

But there's a big difference: a reckless cyclist is at most times a minor nuisance to drivers while a reckless driver (and even a driver who isn't at all wantonly reckless, just insufficiently aware of the needs of cyclists) is a potentially lethal threat to cyclists.

Wrong. A reckless cyclist is a lethal threat to themselves, and they put themselves in at least as much danger as car drivers do.

That is not a contradiction to what I said. A reckless cyclist can be a lethal threat to themselves and yet a minor nuisance to drivers - and it would still be true that reckless drivers (including drivers that would never consider themselves as reckless) are also a lethal threat to cyclists. In other words, a reckless cyclist may well be the greatest danger to himself, and yet drivers (even drivers who consider themselves reasonable) are a much greater danger to the most reasonable cyclist than even the most reckless cyclist will ever be to drivers.

The main issue is that the greatest threat to most cyclists in urban areas is themselves. In addition, they do poser serious threats to drivers all the time. 3 times in just the past 2 days I witnessed cars have to react in dangerous ways to reckless selfish asshole behavior by cyclists. 2 of them blew through 4 way stops and then went diagonally through the intersection, such that they cut off cars in both directions then went the wrong way down one-way streets. There were cars already starting into the intersection that had to stop suddenly and could have been rear-ended. Also, just yesterday, I was passing two bikes that were in a nice safe bike lane, and just as I was passing one bike sped up into the car lane inches in front of me to pass the other bike forcing me to veer into the oncoming lane to avoid hitting them. Had a car been coming the other way at that moment, I could have been killed. I guess I need to try and train my instincts to not veer to avoid bikes coming into my lane and just hit them.
Oh, and that doesn't count the two other bikers I saw today speed right through red lights, timing it so they went between the cars coming on the cross street.
Given this thread, I made an effort the past two days to attend to every biker approaching a 4 way intersection with a stop sign or a red light. This situation occurred 4 times in the 1 mile of non-highway driving I did in the past 2 days. All 4 bikers blew the sign or light, despite cars coming on the cross road or already stopped at the sign an starting to enter the intersection. I didn't see 1 biker actually stop at a stop sign or light.

I have directly witnessed 3 serious bike wrecks in the past year, and all were blatantly the fault of reckless, law-breaking cyclist behavior, such as riding the wrong way down a one-way street, and weaving around cars then abruptly turning left without warning/signaling. Also, this is a threat to car drivers too, who are often forced to suddenly break to avoid hitting reckless cyclists, of even to veer into an oncoming lane because one cyclist illegally passes another by veering into the car lane as cars are passing (which I had to do just last night).

To pick one of your complaints:

Why pick one?

Because, unlike some people, I have no intention to make two-page essays out of my posts.

IOW, you have no intention of providing any evidence or detailed explanation and are incapable of even pretending to counter most of my points, so you pick the one where you can make up some bullshit.

I don't know whether your city's one-way streets have exceptions for cyclists (in my city, many though not all do).

It is illegal in my city, and the fact that such an inherently dangerous special exemption is given to bicyclists is some cities only goes against the overall argument of whining victimization (in addition to the fact that they are almost never cited for their constant violations of traffic laws). One way streets are generally narrow with minimal room for passing and usually slow max speeds. When a cyclist is going in the same direction, the passing speed average around 10 mph and it is easy to wait to pass the cyclist when its safest (e.g., when the road widens, or at the next stop sign in the rare change the cyclist stops).

That's a joke, right? I don't count the number of times cars overtake me in narrow lanes literally ten meters away from a red trafic light! If they can't even refrain from doing it when it's obvious they don't gain anything from it (I'll easily catch up with them as they wait for the trafic lights), why should I trust them to wait for a safe opportunity? In certain kinds there's of streets, I've taken to the habit of riding in the middle of the lane - and that's not being reckless, it's being self-preserving. If the street widens, or if a couple of empty parking lots in a row, I'll pull to the side to let any cars pass me. I might even wait to let several cars pass. But I want to be in control of when they overtake me because it's an empirical fact that drivers cannot be trusted to wait for a safe opportunity.

Its an empirical fact that bikers cannot be trusted to obey any traffic law. I don't consider riding in the road when there is no bike lane to be reckless, but riding the wrong way down a one street is.

When the cyclist is coming in the opposite direction, you now have two vehicles coming at each other on a narrow road at a speed = the sum of each of their speeds, which would typically be 40 mph on a 25mph one-way road. That means a bike coming the wrong way quadruples the passing speed, which not only exponentially increases harm when an accident occurs, but greatly increases the odds of a collision in part by reducing the reaction times and reduces the odds that both parties have time to see each other before they pass.

Bullshit. The fact that I see the car, and can determine whether the driver has seen me, gives me a chance to pull out that I don't have with a car coming from behind. It's true that the harm when an accident occurs is greater, but the chances are orders of magnitude smaller, not larger.

So, according to you, two vehicles negotiating the room needed to pass in a narrow space are much less likely to collide at a passing speed of 40 mph than 10 mph? Every ounce of logic says otherwise. Also, if there are cars parked on the side of the road as is often the case, then there is little you can do to avoid them. The safest thing is to ensure they see you, which is more likely when they have 4 times as much time to notice you because the passing speed is 1/4 what it is when you are coming at them.

The two are forced to pass each other without having the option of waiting for an safer moment, and to do so at much higher speeds with less time to see and react to each other. Also, when a reasonable cyclist is already riding the correct way down the one-way street, then the wrong-way cyclists creates a situation where 3 vehicles are trying to pass each other on a narrow one-way road.

Didn't you just say drivers wait for a safe spot to pass? Are you retracting that ridiculous claim now?

First, no, I did not say that. That is your poor comprehension skills are at work. I said if they are travelling in the same direction, then they can wait for a safer place to pass, if it is not possible to pass safely. I didn't say they always do this, but they certainly often do. I do it on a regular basis as does every driver I ride with. They constantly slow down and ride behind a biker, a delay passing until they feel they can better negotiate it. Most importantly, when you are riding the opposite direction, this is largely impossible to do. Apparently you don't grasp basic principles of objects in motion, but when they are moving in opposite directions, they have no choice but to pass each other, and given the passing speed, its going to be rather quick and without much of any choice as to where. If I come around a turn and see 100 feet in front of me, and see that there is no good spot to pass right now, I can slow down a bit so by the time I reach you, there is a better spot. But if you are coming at me, that is not an option, we are forced to pass each other at some point within that 100 feet between us when I first see you, which at 40mph combined speed will happen in less than 2 seconds. Maybe a basic test of physics understanding should be required to get a bike riding permit.

Not to mention, the danger it poses when any vehicle (car or bike) are pulling out onto a one-way street. The safest way to pull onto a street is to look in the direction from which traffic is coming as you pull into the lane from which the traffic is coming. When making a left turn on a two-way street, that means you focus on looking left as you pull into the road, then shift focus to the right as you enter that lane of traffic. With a one-way street, there is only a single lane, which is not a problem if traffic can only come from a single direction. But when it can come from both directions but within a single lane, they you are fucked. You are forced to pull into the lane while focussed on one direction. Sure, you can and should look first in the other direction, but that is not the same and not as safe. The fact that you would put forth the idea that cycling the wrong way down narrow city streets can be made legal and blindly dismiss the inherent increase in danger this causes whether legal or not, shows that your baseless accusation of confirmation bias was pure hypocritical projection.

You will be glad to hear that cyclists are very much aware that they can easily be overseen

And yet they intentionally do things like go the wrong way that exponentially increase the odds that they will be overseen and hit, so they are either mentally disabled or lack value for their own well-being.

 

[Garnet]

The person who wrote the article ain't kiddin' about how dangerous it is to ride a bicycle here. It's so awful that I won't even consider getting a bicycle even though I could use the exercise.

Having said that, I like it as privilege analogy too.

I rode a bicycle in East Lansing, it was OK to me.

Come over to Miller Rd in South Lansing. Ride from there to Aurelias then onto Jolly all the way into Okemos.

Or, just ride on Cedar St. from Jolly to, oh, say, Michigan. If you're really feeling feisty, ride all the way to Lake Lansing Rd.

Despite the fact that Miller has a bike lane, for a while, once you get west of Cedar, there are no bike lanes. Both of the routes I described are where I drive quite frequently. Neither of them are safe for bicycles for a variety of reasons, not just the lack of back lanes.

East Lansing is more bicycle friendly; it is a college town. But Lansing? Not so much

 

[Jokodo]

Thanks, doubingt, for demonstrating beyond reasonable doubt that you're incapable of putting yourself in someone else's shoes for even a minute. QED.

1 in 10 cyclists stopping at stop signs is overly generous toward cyclists. Just this morning, in the 1/2 mile that I was driving on surface streets I saw 2 bicyclists and 1 ran a stop sign and the other ran a red light. In contrast, I've seen maybe 1-2 cars blow through stop signs and lights in the past year (I'm not talking racing to beat the yellow, I am talking just looking to see if there is traffic moving on the cross street and acting light the sign or light is not even there).

But there's a big difference: a reckless cyclist is at most times a minor nuisance to drivers while a reckless driver (and even a driver who isn't at all wantonly reckless, just insufficiently aware of the needs of cyclists) is a potentially lethal threat to cyclists.

Wrong. A reckless cyclist is a lethal threat to themselves, and they put themselves in at least as much danger as car drivers do.

That is not a contradiction to what I said. A reckless cyclist can be a lethal threat to themselves and yet a minor nuisance to drivers - and it would still be true that reckless drivers (including drivers that would never consider themselves as reckless) are also a lethal threat to cyclists. In other words, a reckless cyclist may well be the greatest danger to himself, and yet drivers (even drivers who consider themselves reasonable) are a much greater danger to the most reasonable cyclist than even the most reckless cyclist will ever be to drivers.

The main issue is that the greatest threat to most cyclists in urban areas is themselves. In addition, they do poser serious threats to drivers all the time. 3 times in just the past 2 days I witnessed cars have to react in dangerous ways to reckless selfish asshole behavior by cyclists. 2 of them blew through 4 way stops and then went diagonally through the intersection, such that they cut off cars in both directions then went the wrong way down one-way streets. There were cars already starting into the intersection that had to stop suddenly and could have been rear-ended. Also, just yesterday, I was passing two bikes that were in a nice safe bike lane, and just as I was passing one bike sped up into the car lane inches in front of me to pass the other bike forcing me to veer into the oncoming lane to avoid hitting them. Had a car been coming the other way at that moment, I could have been killed. I guess I need to try and train my instincts to not veer to avoid bikes coming into my lane and just hit them.
Oh, and that doesn't count the two other bikers I saw today speed right through red lights, timing it so they went between the cars coming on the cross street.
Given this thread, I made an effort the past two days to attend to every biker approaching a 4 way intersection with a stop sign or a red light. This situation occurred 4 times in the 1 mile of non-highway driving I did in the past 2 days. All 4 bikers blew the sign or light, despite cars coming on the cross road or already stopped at the sign an starting to enter the intersection. I didn't see 1 biker actually stop at a stop sign or light.

I have directly witnessed 3 serious bike wrecks in the past year, and all were blatantly the fault of reckless, law-breaking cyclist behavior, such as riding the wrong way down a one-way street, and weaving around cars then abruptly turning left without warning/signaling. Also, this is a threat to car drivers too, who are often forced to suddenly break to avoid hitting reckless cyclists, of even to veer into an oncoming lane because one cyclist illegally passes another by veering into the car lane as cars are passing (which I had to do just last night).

To pick one of your complaints:

Why pick one?

Because, unlike some people, I have no intention to make two-page essays out of my posts.

IOW, you have no intention of providing any evidence or detailed explanation and are incapable of even pretending to counter most of my points, so you pick the one where you can make up some bullshit.

I don't know whether your city's one-way streets have exceptions for cyclists (in my city, many though not all do).

It is illegal in my city, and the fact that such an inherently dangerous special exemption is given to bicyclists is some cities only goes against the overall argument of whining victimization (in addition to the fact that they are almost never cited for their constant violations of traffic laws). One way streets are generally narrow with minimal room for passing and usually slow max speeds. When a cyclist is going in the same direction, the passing speed average around 10 mph and it is easy to wait to pass the cyclist when its safest (e.g., when the road widens, or at the next stop sign in the rare change the cyclist stops).

That's a joke, right? I don't count the number of times cars overtake me in narrow lanes literally ten meters away from a red trafic light! If they can't even refrain from doing it when it's obvious they don't gain anything from it (I'll easily catch up with them as they wait for the trafic lights), why should I trust them to wait for a safe opportunity? In certain kinds there's of streets, I've taken to the habit of riding in the middle of the lane - and that's not being reckless, it's being self-preserving. If the street widens, or if a couple of empty parking lots in a row, I'll pull to the side to let any cars pass me. I might even wait to let several cars pass. But I want to be in control of when they overtake me because it's an empirical fact that drivers cannot be trusted to wait for a safe opportunity.

Its an empirical fact that bikers cannot be trusted to obey any traffic law. I don't consider riding in the road when there is no bike lane to be reckless, but riding the wrong way down a one street is.

When the cyclist is coming in the opposite direction, you now have two vehicles coming at each other on a narrow road at a speed = the sum of each of their speeds, which would typically be 40 mph on a 25mph one-way road. That means a bike coming the wrong way quadruples the passing speed, which not only exponentially increases harm when an accident occurs, but greatly increases the odds of a collision in part by reducing the reaction times and reduces the odds that both parties have time to see each other before they pass.

Bullshit. The fact that I see the car, and can determine whether the driver has seen me, gives me a chance to pull out that I don't have with a car coming from behind. It's true that the harm when an accident occurs is greater, but the chances are orders of magnitude smaller, not larger.

So, according to you, two vehicles negotiating the room needed to pass in a narrow space are much less likely to collide at a passing speed of 40 mph than 10 mph? Every ounce of logic says otherwise. Also, if there are cars parked on the side of the road as is often the case, then there is little you can do to avoid them. The safest thing is to ensure they see you, which is more likely when they have 4 times as much time to notice you because the passing speed is 1/4 what it is when you are coming at them.

The two are forced to pass each other without having the option of waiting for an safer moment, and to do so at much higher speeds with less time to see and react to each other. Also, when a reasonable cyclist is already riding the correct way down the one-way street, then the wrong-way cyclists creates a situation where 3 vehicles are trying to pass each other on a narrow one-way road.

Didn't you just say drivers wait for a safe spot to pass? Are you retracting that ridiculous claim now?

First, no, I did not say that. That is your poor comprehension skills are at work. I said if they are travelling in the same direction, then they can wait for a safer place to pass, if it is not possible to pass safely. I didn't say they always do this, but they certainly often do. I do it on a regular basis as does every driver I ride with. They constantly slow down and ride behind a biker, a delay passing until they feel they can better negotiate it. Most importantly, when you are riding the opposite direction, this is largely impossible to do. Apparently you don't grasp basic principles of objects in motion, but when they are moving in opposite directions, they have no choice but to pass each other, and given the passing speed, its going to be rather quick and without much of any choice as to where. If I come around a turn and see 100 feet in front of me, and see that there is no good spot to pass right now, I can slow down a bit so by the time I reach you, there is a better spot. But if you are coming at me, that is not an option, we are forced to pass each other at some point within that 100 feet between us when I first see you, which at 40mph combined speed will happen in less than 2 seconds. Maybe a basic test of physics understanding should be required to get a bike riding permit.

Not to mention, the danger it poses when any vehicle (car or bike) are pulling out onto a one-way street. The safest way to pull onto a street is to look in the direction from which traffic is coming as you pull into the lane from which the traffic is coming. When making a left turn on a two-way street, that means you focus on looking left as you pull into the road, then shift focus to the right as you enter that lane of traffic. With a one-way street, there is only a single lane, which is not a problem if traffic can only come from a single direction. But when it can come from both directions but within a single lane, they you are fucked. You are forced to pull into the lane while focussed on one direction. Sure, you can and should look first in the other direction, but that is not the same and not as safe. The fact that you would put forth the idea that cycling the wrong way down narrow city streets can be made legal and blindly dismiss the inherent increase in danger this causes whether legal or not, shows that your baseless accusation of confirmation bias was pure hypocritical projection.

You will be glad to hear that cyclists are very much aware that they can easily be overseen

And yet they intentionally do things like go the wrong way that exponentially increase the odds that they will be overseen and hit, so they are either mentally disabled or lack value for their own well-being.

Am I expressing myself that poorly are are you just thick?

Yes, the safest thing is to ensure they see you, but a lot of drivers will proceed as if they hadn't seen you, so a lot of time, making sure that you can see them and gauge whether they've seen you and how they're going to proceed is a big plus. And that's one thing going the wrong way gives you. Now, I generally don't ride against one way rodes unless there are exceptions for cyclists, and those roads that have exceptions generally aren't the narrowest of narrow ones. Unless there's a truck or something that's too long for the parking lot standing into the lane, I and an upcoming car can pass each other without danger if we just slow down slightly. If there is a truck, I'll stop before I reach it to let the car pass. But yes, under these circumstances, it feels safer than going the same road in the opposite direction.

Your physics lessons are not required. Take some psychology instead. This isn't about physics, this is about perception.

And, by the way, I do have a driving license and can directly compare. The only time I regularly drove was when I lived in the countryside, and I still find city driving stressful. But cyclists are not what makes it stressful. Cars, on the other hand, are what makes cycling in the city stressful.

 

[laughing dog]

To recognize a fact is not racist.

None says that blacks are underprivileged just by being blacks. Noone says that being black is in itself the cause to being underprivileged.The cause is how blacks are treated. I can understand if this fine nuance is beyond you.

Blacks (as a general term, not individually) are said to be underprivilieged because it is an easily observed fact that they are.

It is a fact that blacks have lower average GPAs, SAT scores, and IQ scores.

Is it therefore not at racist to use the term "black idiocy" to refer to this?

It certainly would be insulting and ignorant because people with lower GPA and SAT scores are not necessarily idiots. I suppose one could redefine idiocy so that was true, but that redefinition would be idiotic.