Would Jesus have driven an SUV? The great paradox!

[Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher]

I don't think it fits the character, but the Christians do. And that's the great paradox of our times. Not only the SUV is a symbol of power, it can destroy the life of those driving mundane cars. Not to mention its environmental impact.

Oh well, a few prayers said here and there should make them guilt-free. Let me see, Jesus rode a donkey. That's a metaphor. It means Jesus would be a pedestrian today. Or perhaps he would drive a little Toyota.

That paradox is easy to solve: They should look for a god with a hammer.


------------------------------------------------------------

"The jungle has never been this much fun!"

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nffbCR_uCZ6znjf3gLiFRXSAoLzhWtoZ6U4S7Y37aKc/edit?usp=sharing

[Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher]

Post by Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher
I don't think it fits the character, but the Christians do. And that's the great paradox of our times. Not only the SUV is a symbol of power, it can destroy the life of those driving mundane cars. Not to mention its environmental impact.

Think he's have needed a coach for the entourage.
But I don't think the SUV is as much a symbol of power, as a symbol of fear. Used to be Volvos. SUVs are most often driven by mums who think they are keeping their kids safe.

No macho man in Florida or Texas should be seen without one. True, moms do use them for "protection," but in doing so they endanger innocent people.

Another factor to remember is that the British SUVs are wimpy. You must have a double-wheeled pick up truck with a train horn.

Loading Image...

[59Fiat600 Rossa]

Post by Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher
No macho man in Florida or Texas should be seen without one. True, moms do use them for "protection," but in doing so they endanger innocent people.

I am retired and I own a VW Beetle, which I do not drive anywhere with any great frequency. I walk a mile every morning, so I may actually walk farther than I drive.

We have had a little bit of rain, and a frog outside my window is croaking appreciatively.

[Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher]

Post by 59Fiat600 Rossa

Post by Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher
No macho man in Florida or Texas should be seen without one. True, moms do use them for "protection," but in doing so they endanger innocent people.

I am retired and I own a VW Beetle, which I do not drive anywhere with any great frequency. I walk a mile every morning, so I may actually walk farther than I drive.
We have had a little bit of rain, and a frog outside my window is croaking appreciatively.

You are a model senior citizen. I tried walking but my street is under "construction, destruction, corruption." Next we'll try the gym downstairs. I catch buses and walk a little though.

[Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher]

IS CYCLING SAFE?
by Andre Jute
Cycling statistics are thrown about by passionate advocates for this
or against the other with gay abandon for meaning and sense, so I
decided to conduct my own investigation and get at the facts.
Statistics is the art of spiraling in on enough sets of numbers in
broad agreement to make an informed decision. Decimals are a luxury
for ivory tower lurkers who wouldn't survive a day in the real world;
all that is required is a set of mutually reinforcing numbers tending
the same way.
Safety numbers do not stand in isolation. They are always in relation
to something else, which sets a baseline. In bicycle safety, the
comparison is with fatalities in automobile travel. It is not
necessarily the best comparison. For instance, if I were killed on the
road, my family would find it inconvenient but I would no longer care;
I would find being maimed or hurt on the road much more inconvenient,
 but I have no good numbers for serious injury short of fatality. We
have to compare cycling to what we have, which is automobile
fatalities.
So one's entire attitude to bicycle safety depends on whether one
 considers automobile travel safe enough. Most of us do. The unspoken
 qualification is "in the light of its benefits." Bicycling must be
given the same benefit of weighing not just danger but net gain.
***
A cyclist is 2.9 times more likely to be killed on any journey than
someone riding in a car.
( http://www.ta.org.br/site/Banco/7manuais/VTPIpuchertq.pdf )
A cyclist is 11 times more likely to be killed per mile of travel than
someone riding in a car.
(ibid)
A cyclist is roughly 2 or 3 or 4 times (11 divided by 3, 4, and 5,
and remember what I said about decimals) as likely to be killed per
hour on his bike as someone riding in an automobile. That accords well
with a number we already have, that a cyclist is 2.9 times as likely
to be killed per journey as a motorist.
All these numbers, including the outlyer of 11 times more cycling
fatalities per journey for cyclists than motorists, accord well with
the knowledge that most travel fatalities happen within three miles of
home, and the additional fact that most bicycles journeys are of less
than two miles.
We've now arrived at where cycling carries somewhere around three
times the risk of dying compared to motoring, with a fifty per cent
margin each way. It's extremely encouraging for a first approximation
to be so close, because not all cyclists ride under the same
circumstances or in the same way.
***
Let's check the numbers we have against known statistics. In the US,
about 700 cyclists and around 40,000 motorised travellers will become
traffic fatalities this year.
Nobody knows precisely how many cyclists there are but BRAIN reported
for the National Sporting Goods Association in 2008 that 44.7m rode
six or more times a year, of which 25m rode more than 24 times a year.
It is this 25m more or less regular cyclists we want to work with;
they very likely largely overlap the 24m who reported to the BTS in
2000-2001 that they cycled at least once a week. (
http://www.bts.gov/publications/highlights_of_the_2001_national_household_travel_survey/html/table_a01.html
)
That works out to about 1 chance in 36,000 that a cyclist will be
killed on the road this year.
Nobody knows precisely how many people travel in internal combustion
vehicles either. But about 200m Americans have driving licenses, and
only 8 per cent of households don't have a car available; most of
those presumably travel by bus. We can probably safely say that around
390m Americans account for the 40,000 passenger casualties every year.
(That probably overstates the numbers who don't travel at all and take
trains, but it makes minuscule differences.)
That works out to about 1 chance in 9750 that an automobile traveller
will be killed on the road this year.
Eh? One chance in 36,000 that a cyclist will be killed v. one chance
in 9750 that a motorist will be killed this year. Can cycling really
be near enough four times safer than motoring? Even when we have
already decided that per trip and per hour cycling is about three
times more likely to get you killed than motoring?
Absolutely. Cyclists don't ride the enormous mileages motorists cover,
nor do they take as many trips. The per trip and per mile and per hour
disadvantage soon disappears over the longer term. I suspect that the
half-million or so habitual commuters in the States are pushing their
luck but recreational cyclists are exposed too little to worry (as
long as they don't do anything stupid, of course).
***
These numbers all refer to the States, where the average household has
1.8 cars for 1.7 licensed drivers, with consequences that are obvious.
I should however be surprised to discover that the numbers for any
anglophone country is drastically lower; they all aspire to emulate
the American lifestyle.
In my own country, Ireland, 9 cyclists were killed on the roads in
2006, the last year for which I have statistics, but that merely
reflects the drastic fall in cycling (never very popular) because most
people consider the roads far too dangerous; almost no children cycle
now. 29 pedestrians and 226 motorists also died on the roads, out of a
population of less than 4.5m; a motorist has about a 1 in 20,000
chance of dying in his or her car in any year, which sounds better
than in the States but the roads are much narrower and more crowded, a
nightmare for cyclists; I mention this to stress that gross numbers,
especially from foreign parts, should be adopted only with some
sensitivity to local conditions.
The bicycling cultures of Germany and The Netherlands have much lower
cycling fatalities on any sensible measure than anyone else but these
arise not so much from superior facilities as from a bicycle-directed
culture rather than a automobile-centred culture.
***

We're back where we started. A cyclist is more like to die on the road
than a motorist by a factor of 2.9 per trip, 11 per kilometre
(probably a not overly relevant statistic, as explained above), and
about 3 per hour on the bike.
I conclude that, roughly speaking, cycling carries in microcosm, ride
by ride, three times more risk of dying on the road than motoring.
However, in total, because cycling trips are shorter than motoring
trips, and there are fewer of them, the total macrorisk of death while
cycling is between three and four times *less*, on average over the
full year, than while motoring.
***
Commuters or other cyclists who ride big mileages are of course at
bigger risk and should consider the risk per hour on the bike, which
ranges from about 2-4 times that of driving (for traffic travelling no
faster than four times the cyclist's speed).
***
I cycle for my health. It works.
There are general health benefits to individuals, the environment and
society from cycling.
Everyone must make up his own mind. But I decided long ago that the
health benefits of cycling outweigh the per hour/per trip risks. I've
given up the car.
Andre Jute
10 April 2010.
***
Not copyright. May be freely reproduced. It would be a courtesy to use
the article in full including this note.

I have every reason to believe that the conditions for cyclists in Ireland --or anywhere in the world-- are not as extreme as in America. Nowhere else is driving such a democratic exercise where even an idiot can drive. Nowhere else in the civilized world are SPEED CAMERAS kept from bringing a sense of safety. Nowhere else can SUVs roam freely and the cars are totally unsafe. Nowhere else can the drivers flaunt their talking on the cell phone. Nowhere else pedestrians must look over their shoulder because cyclists have taken over their space in order to survive.
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE.

Roads on the Indian subcontinent are widely known to be much more dangerous than those in America or Ireland.
Good numbers are hard to come by, and are often not comparable because of either technical statistical reasons or because the conditions are different. For instance, in America it is agressive, careless, lawless drivers that are the problem, together with speed, but the roads are generally good and wide with wide enough shoulders. In Ireland drivers are (recently) better, but the speeds are higher, and the roads are bad, and the shoulders on a few miles of road vary from nil to not wide enough, to a lethal 6 inch strip, and can be badly broken too, so that it is impossible to ride near them. So, on one side a heavy stream of traffic at 100-110kph, on the other a narrow or nonexistent shoulder with a rockhard barrier with triangular metal protrusions at a knee height. The only serious option is to choose another route.
Yesterday on the road a guy stopped his car to talk to me. I used to cycle with him. 25 years ago we would go out in the dark after dinner and ride 30 or 40 miles on roads on which my present pedalpals won't go for even a kilometer to cut 10km out of a ride through safer lanes. Even I, marginally more daring, don't go on them except at dawn on Sunday mornings, when the big trucks are absent, and then only for links, not for whole rides. The chap who stopped me, not noticeably a wimp, says his bike has been hung up in the garage for these twenty years now because the roads are too dangerous.
Andre Jute

It sounds like Costa Rica, but that keeps the dumb masses from ever driving. In America they accommodate those masses. The auto transmission, the straight roads, the easy license, the lack of options, all lead to it.
The dumb masses are better off riding bikes.

Duh. The truth is that there is safety in cycling numbers. Without the huge percentage of citizens cycling there would be no Copenhagen Experience, no Holland to hold up as an example of a "cycling culture" or a "cycling mentality". As just one point of proof of argument of this line of thought: in The Netherlands a motorist who hits a cyclist is presumed to be at fault; can anyone with a grasp of how the modern demotic works believe that would long stay the law if motorists were to outnumber cyclists, as in the States.
It should also be mentioned that the cadre of *routine* cyclists in the States, despite lip service to that glorious cycling utopia that only fools believe in, viscerally do not, repeat NOT, want all those slow, weaving idiots on their routes. You can see proof of what I say in the horror of even well-meaning prozetylisers for bicycling when they learn that Dutch bicycle traffic moves under 15kph. American cyclists want to keep up 25kph or even 25mph. That will never be a viable proposition for Joe Public.
It is not difficult to conclude that in the States the proponents of cycling can forget about reform being naturally inspired by mass cycling, and that cycling safety will have to improve by legislation, a slippery slope to enter on, because the impulse is always for more legislation, and an ever wider spread of legislation, rather than reducing legislation. It is very difficult to believe that over the long term even cyclist-friendly legislation will not be accompanied by ever-greater restrictions on cyclists.
The only available alternative for improving cycling safety in the States is voluntary efforts at educating the motoring public. Good luck with that! One wing of organized cycling doesn't even grasp that possibly as many as 400 of the 700-odd annual cycling fatalities in the US are unnecessary, never mind have a plan for educating drivers to reduce cycling fatalities to less than half the present incidence.
Andre Jute
I dream of a cycling universe... and then I woke

I have a dream...

That they one day attack driving like they attack the cigarette. But no --perish the thought-- nobody raises the issue that driving everywhere is bad for your health. Nobody dares to say that it's polluting the world and endangering others on the road. Nobody dares to say that it drains your money, money that could go toward eating better and have a better quality of life.

Oh, holy cow, my beloved automobile, you are my life but I hate you. I hate you because they force you on me. Yes, I'm addicted to you, but I long for a bike ride in my community. This is the way it is in capitalist jungle.

Mao was right and Adam Smith was wrong. But wait, there's a few countries out there the trend goes in the right direction, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark... We need a revolution that does what needs to be done. Where? Somewhere in the Third World where the corporations are not that entrenched. Then we can turn around and say, "Sorry, America, we are not interested in your way of life. The rat race is not for us."

[Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher]

IS CYCLING SAFE?
by Andre Jute
Cycling statistics are thrown about by passionate advocates for this
or against the other with gay abandon for meaning and sense, so I
decided to conduct my own investigation and get at the facts.
Statistics is the art of spiraling in on enough sets of numbers in
broad agreement to make an informed decision. Decimals are a luxury
for ivory tower lurkers who wouldn't survive a day in the real world;
all that is required is a set of mutually reinforcing numbers tending
the same way.
Safety numbers do not stand in isolation. They are always in relation
to something else, which sets a baseline. In bicycle safety, the
comparison is with fatalities in automobile travel. It is not
necessarily the best comparison. For instance, if I were killed on the
road, my family would find it inconvenient but I would no longer care;
I would find being maimed or hurt on the road much more inconvenient,
 but I have no good numbers for serious injury short of fatality. We
have to compare cycling to what we have, which is automobile
fatalities.
So one's entire attitude to bicycle safety depends on whether one
 considers automobile travel safe enough. Most of us do. The unspoken
 qualification is "in the light of its benefits." Bicycling must be
given the same benefit of weighing not just danger but net gain.
***
A cyclist is 2.9 times more likely to be killed on any journey than
someone riding in a car.
( http://www.ta.org.br/site/Banco/7manuais/VTPIpuchertq.pdf )
A cyclist is 11 times more likely to be killed per mile of travel than
someone riding in a car.
(ibid)
A cyclist is roughly 2 or 3 or 4 times (11 divided by 3, 4, and 5,
and remember what I said about decimals) as likely to be killed per
hour on his bike as someone riding in an automobile. That accords well
with a number we already have, that a cyclist is 2.9 times as likely
to be killed per journey as a motorist.
All these numbers, including the outlyer of 11 times more cycling
fatalities per journey for cyclists than motorists, accord well with
the knowledge that most travel fatalities happen within three miles of
home, and the additional fact that most bicycles journeys are of less
than two miles.
We've now arrived at where cycling carries somewhere around three
times the risk of dying compared to motoring, with a fifty per cent
margin each way. It's extremely encouraging for a first approximation
to be so close, because not all cyclists ride under the same
circumstances or in the same way.
***
Let's check the numbers we have against known statistics. In the US,
about 700 cyclists and around 40,000 motorised travellers will become
traffic fatalities this year.
Nobody knows precisely how many cyclists there are but BRAIN reported
for the National Sporting Goods Association in 2008 that 44.7m rode
six or more times a year, of which 25m rode more than 24 times a year.
It is this 25m more or less regular cyclists we want to work with;
they very likely largely overlap the 24m who reported to the BTS in
2000-2001 that they cycled at least once a week. (
http://www.bts.gov/publications/highlights_of_the_2001_national_household_travel_survey/html/table_a01.html
)
That works out to about 1 chance in 36,000 that a cyclist will be
killed on the road this year.
Nobody knows precisely how many people travel in internal combustion
vehicles either. But about 200m Americans have driving licenses, and
only 8 per cent of households don't have a car available; most of
those presumably travel by bus. We can probably safely say that around
390m Americans account for the 40,000 passenger casualties every year.
(That probably overstates the numbers who don't travel at all and take
trains, but it makes minuscule differences.)
That works out to about 1 chance in 9750 that an automobile traveller
will be killed on the road this year.
Eh? One chance in 36,000 that a cyclist will be killed v. one chance
in 9750 that a motorist will be killed this year. Can cycling really
be near enough four times safer than motoring? Even when we have
already decided that per trip and per hour cycling is about three
times more likely to get you killed than motoring?
Absolutely. Cyclists don't ride the enormous mileages motorists cover,
nor do they take as many trips. The per trip and per mile and per hour
disadvantage soon disappears over the longer term. I suspect that the
half-million or so habitual commuters in the States are pushing their
luck but recreational cyclists are exposed too little to worry (as
long as they don't do anything stupid, of course).
***
These numbers all refer to the States, where the average household has
1.8 cars for 1.7 licensed drivers, with consequences that are obvious.
I should however be surprised to discover that the numbers for any
anglophone country is drastically lower; they all aspire to emulate
the American lifestyle.
In my own country, Ireland, 9 cyclists were killed on the roads in
2006, the last year for which I have statistics, but that merely
reflects the drastic fall in cycling (never very popular) because most
people consider the roads far too dangerous; almost no children cycle
now. 29 pedestrians and 226 motorists also died on the roads, out of a
population of less than 4.5m; a motorist has about a 1 in 20,000
chance of dying in his or her car in any year, which sounds better
than in the States but the roads are much narrower and more crowded, a
nightmare for cyclists; I mention this to stress that gross numbers,
especially from foreign parts, should be adopted only with some
sensitivity to local conditions.
The bicycling cultures of Germany and The Netherlands have much lower
cycling fatalities on any sensible measure than anyone else but these
arise not so much from superior facilities as from a bicycle-directed
culture rather than a automobile-centred culture.
***

We're back where we started. A cyclist is more like to die on the road
than a motorist by a factor of 2.9 per trip, 11 per kilometre
(probably a not overly relevant statistic, as explained above), and
about 3 per hour on the bike.
I conclude that, roughly speaking, cycling carries in microcosm, ride
by ride, three times more risk of dying on the road than motoring.
However, in total, because cycling trips are shorter than motoring
trips, and there are fewer of them, the total macrorisk of death while
cycling is between three and four times *less*, on average over the
full year, than while motoring.
***
Commuters or other cyclists who ride big mileages are of course at
bigger risk and should consider the risk per hour on the bike, which
ranges from about 2-4 times that of driving (for traffic travelling no
faster than four times the cyclist's speed).
***
I cycle for my health. It works.
There are general health benefits to individuals, the environment and
society from cycling.
Everyone must make up his own mind. But I decided long ago that the
health benefits of cycling outweigh the per hour/per trip risks. I've
given up the car.
Andre Jute
10 April 2010.
***
Not copyright. May be freely reproduced. It would be a courtesy to use
the article in full including this note.

I have every reason to believe that the conditions for cyclists in Ireland --or anywhere in the world-- are not as extreme as in America. Nowhere else is driving such a democratic exercise where even an idiot can drive. Nowhere else in the civilized world are SPEED CAMERAS kept from bringing a sense of safety. Nowhere else can SUVs roam freely and the cars are totally unsafe. Nowhere else can the drivers flaunt their talking on the cell phone. Nowhere else pedestrians must look over their shoulder because cyclists have taken over their space in order to survive.
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE.

Roads on the Indian subcontinent are widely known to be much more dangerous than those in America or Ireland.
Good numbers are hard to come by, and are often not comparable because of either technical statistical reasons or because the conditions are different. For instance, in America it is agressive, careless, lawless drivers that are the problem, together with speed, but the roads are generally good and wide with wide enough shoulders. In Ireland drivers are (recently) better, but the speeds are higher, and the roads are bad, and the shoulders on a few miles of road vary from nil to not wide enough, to a lethal 6 inch strip, and can be badly broken too, so that it is impossible to ride near them. So, on one side a heavy stream of traffic at 100-110kph, on the other a narrow or nonexistent shoulder with a rockhard barrier with triangular metal protrusions at a knee height. The only serious option is to choose another route.
Yesterday on the road a guy stopped his car to talk to me. I used to cycle with him. 25 years ago we would go out in the dark after dinner and ride 30 or 40 miles on roads on which my present pedalpals won't go for even a kilometer to cut 10km out of a ride through safer lanes. Even I, marginally more daring, don't go on them except at dawn on Sunday mornings, when the big trucks are absent, and then only for links, not for whole rides. The chap who stopped me, not noticeably a wimp, says his bike has been hung up in the garage for these twenty years now because the roads are too dangerous.
Andre Jute

It sounds like Costa Rica, but that keeps the dumb masses from ever driving. In America they accommodate those masses. The auto transmission, the straight roads, the easy license, the lack of options, all lead to it.

The dumb masses are better off riding bikes.

[Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher]

On Saturday, June 13, 2015 at 9:32:22 AM UTC-4, Wise TibetanMonkey,

It sounds like Costa Rica, but that keeps the dumb masses from ever driving. In America they accommodate those masses. The auto transmission, the straight roads, the easy license, the lack of options, all lead to it.
The dumb masses are better off riding bikes.

Needless to say the dumb masses don't think about climate change or stuff like that. But that's because they have been spared from reality. They live in a bubble --or may I say a cage-- where they must try to survive. They live in a cage and then drive a cage. Any kind of questioning is dismissed and referred to the psychiatrist.

As far as being dumb to ride a bike, yes they may not be fit to ride a bike but they can ride a trike. I love the trike myself. You ride it with great abandon and you do not follow rules, some of them dumb themselves. You can play dumb even if you are not dumb. Riding a bike doesn't require following rules like in an automobile. You are free to play. It's like being a kid once again playing with his trike.

But if you really want to play dumb, try public transportation. No thinking whatsoever and nothing is more dumb than waiting 45 minutes for the bus.

May I say Albert Einstein was once part of the dumb masses and then thought of the theory of relativity while riding a bike. Or so they say. The car just makes you a raging madman. You start hating the world and all the traffic jams. Have you ever experienced a positive thought while sitting in traffic?

Do you read the Bible? Depressing, totally depressing.

[Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher]

Post by Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher
On Saturday, June 13, 2015 at 9:32:22 AM UTC-4, Wise TibetanMonkey,

It sounds like Costa Rica, but that keeps the dumb masses from ever driving. In America they accommodate those masses. The auto transmission, the straight roads, the easy license, the lack of options, all lead to it.
The dumb masses are better off riding bikes.

Needless to say the dumb masses don't think about climate change or stuff like that. But that's because they have been spared from reality. They live in a bubble --or may I say a cage-- where they must try to survive. They live in a cage and then drive a cage. Any kind of questioning is dismissed and referred to the psychiatrist.
As far as being dumb to ride a bike, yes they may not be fit to ride a bike but they can ride a trike. I love the trike myself. You ride it with great abandon and you do not follow rules, some of them dumb themselves. You can play dumb even if you are not dumb. Riding a bike doesn't require following rules like in an automobile. You are free to play. It's like being a kid once again playing with his trike.
But if you really want to play dumb, try public transportation. No thinking whatsoever and nothing is more dumb than waiting 45 minutes for the bus.
May I say Albert Einstein was once part of the dumb masses and then thought of the theory of relativity while riding a bike. Or so they say. The car just makes you a raging madman. You start hating the world and all the traffic jams. Have you ever experienced a positive thought while sitting in traffic?
Do you read the Bible? Depressing, totally depressing.

Imagine this: You start listening to the Bible in traffic --bumper to bumper-- and start praying, "Jesus, why are you sending the Carmageddon to us? Please deliver us from this mess."

And Jesus goes, "Oh, don't be silly. You must ride a bike like me! We ride bikes in Heaven while they sit in endless traffic jams in Hell."

Oh well, Jesus can be smart when he wants.

NOTE: I do not recommend you let Jesus be your copilot. He's totally reckless.

[Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher]

Post by Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher
On Saturday, June 13, 2015 at 9:32:22 AM UTC-4, Wise TibetanMonkey,

It sounds like Costa Rica, but that keeps the dumb masses from ever
driving. In America they accommodate those masses. The auto transmission,
the straight roads, the easy license, the lack of options, all lead to it.
The dumb masses are better off riding bikes.

Needless to say the dumb masses don't think about climate change or stuff
like that. But that's because they have been spared from reality. They live
in a bubble --or may I say a cage-- where they must try to survive. They
live in a cage and then drive a cage. Any kind of questioning is dismissed
and referred to the psychiatrist.
As far as being dumb to ride a bike, yes they may not be fit to ride a bike
but they can ride a trike. I love the trike myself. You ride it with great
abandon and you do not follow rules, some of them dumb themselves. You can
play dumb even if you are not dumb. Riding a bike doesn't require following
rules like in an automobile. You are free to play. It's like being a kid
once again playing with his trike.
But if you really want to play dumb, try public transportation. No thinking
whatsoever and nothing is more dumb than waiting 45 minutes for the bus.
May I say Albert Einstein was once part of the dumb masses and then thought
of the theory of relativity while riding a bike. Or so they say. The car
just makes you a raging madman. You start hating the world and all the
traffic jams. Have you ever experienced a positive thought while sitting in
traffic?
Do you read the Bible? Depressing, totally depressing.
------------
I think this quote was in a novel by Carlos Castenada - 'Don't waste your
time with this shit'. The rants against SUV drivers and denigrating others
doesn't really help your point. (Did you know that other than U.S. urban
areas, public transportation is spotty if available at all - and that the
vast majority of people in the world do not have cars and rely entirely on
walking and public transportation?) Since this is a passion for you - do you
perhaps see that there might be better ways to get your point across?
Probably not as fun I'm sure.
Another view from a bicycle rider.

My understanding is the USA has the worst transportation system in the civilized world and much of the uncivilized world as well. It has to do with the sprawl and the tyranny of the car. Other cities have many options, including the bicycle and the scooter.

Our PUBLIC transportation system generally sucks compared to European countries. By car I can go from the middle of this city to the north side in about 30 minutes. The only public option, by bus, takes 2 hours. But between cities it is different than in Europe, as there are much longer distances involved. In Germany, an 8-hour drive can take you from the southern border to the northern border. In the US, drive for 8 hours and you could still be in the same state.

Some of it may geography, some cultural, some political, but most of it is profiteering. Many corporations benefit from it.

Indeed. Especially the auto industry.

And Big Oil. First they killed the horse, then the bicycle and then the pedestrian.

Nobody moves to the corner store without the car. It may be dangerous...

[Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher]

On Sat, 13 Jun 2015 20:33:51 -0700 (PDT),

Of course a cyclist does not receive the privileges
of a pedestrian... upon reflection, I may have
recently pushed, not ridden, my bicycle against
a one-way street; I'd better make time to check
the Code to see whether that's counted as a sin.
You can't wheel through a traffic junction when
you wouldn't be allowed to ride, or on a
"pedestrian precinct". In such situations,
I allow myself to carry the bicycle with wheels
off the ground, but this may not achieve innocence.

Pushing your bike is fine: once you dismount, you count as a
foot passenger on the footway.
Long but very detailed, a guide to the legal aspects of
http://www.bikehub.co.uk/featured-articles/cycling-and-the-law/

Hmm... it says, "The primary legislation which makes cycling
on a footway an offence is section 72 of the 1835 Highways Act,
this provides that a person shall be guilty of an offence if
he "shall wilfully ride upon any footpath or causeway by the
side of any road made or set apart for the use or accommodation
of foot-passengers or shall wilfully lead or drive any carriage
of any description upon any such footpath or causeway."

And this is why I will NEVER ride a bicycle again. Only someone
completely suicidal would ride a bike on the street, and I could never
afford the fines from riding on the sidewalk.

Hey girl, you don't like playing Russian roulette with your life?

Mind you, being this a Banana Republic, you may ride on the sidewalk. The problem is you are a threat to pedestrians. Actually you are not even safer on sidewalks and every intersection becomes a conflict zone.

It sounds like fun???

[Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher]

My understanding is the USA has the worst transportation system in the
civilized world and much of the uncivilized world as well. It has to do with
the sprawl and the tyranny of the car. Other cities have many options,
including the bicycle and the scooter.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
You are an idiot, pure and simple. You have the cause & effect or
transportation choices completely backwards. The bicycle and scooter exist
in undeveloped countries for economic reasons, not because of the desire to
give transportation choices. You are a f---ing idiot.
Developed countries tend to move towards automation in virtually everything,
including transportation. The long and straight highways you despise are the
reason why America leads the world in every area -- well, we did until Obama
came to town. In any case, one can get into his car and drive on an advanced
highway system from one coast to the other in 3 days. Name any other country
on the planet where you can go 2500+ miles in 3 days.
Where our system falls apart is in the urban areas where public
transportation is lacking on a regional basis. For example, one can get on a
bus or train, or taxi, in downtown Los Angeles and move freely about. But
one has difficult getting out of the downtown area to the outlying regions.
This is true in most, if not all, urban areas. Having said that, I am among
the few in California that used public transportation to commute from my
home to my office. I am well versed in how the system works, and how it
fails, and the issues are not at all what you think they are. That's why you
are an idiot. You insist that there is a one-size-fits-all solution to a
problem that is very complicated because the development of the options that
preclude public transport -- the private automobile -- developed and spread
faster than the public infrastructure.
You rail against the SUV, but the reality is that there are just crappy
drivers out there that mow over bicycle riders with abandon every chance
they get. The SUV has no bearing on this, it's crappy drivers. Period. No
matter how poorly drivers are at operating 2 tons of steel, bike riders
violate traffic laws and this leads to their demise. Keep to the right
shoulder and the SUVs will try to not make a shit-stain on the front bumper
from your ass as you disappear below the hood ornament.
F---ing moron.

I told you that you are always on the wrong side of the issues --except one if I remember right. Which is you favored Daylight Running Lights as is the rule in Canada and Europe. It can prevent lots of accidents.

Anyway, your Christian faith doesn't help your reasoning process, but that's an excuse. You must learn to follow the Wise and Humble. Yes, any other civilized out there not only has better transportation, but has bullet trains and other options other than the car. Even their cars are smarter and smaller, less destructive to others and the environment. SUV means Stupid Uncivilized Vehicle.

I know you won't believe because I disguise myself as a humble monkey. If I were to be a preacher, then you'd believe me.

Los Angeles is the epitome of dysfunctional transportation system. I know you built some kind of light train recently, but that can not possibly cover the ugly sprawl, a landscape devoid of life and bicycles. What an irony the bicycle could easily navigate the sprawl. The problem is Hollywood exports a model other monkeys around the world will try to emulate. The car, oh the car. Freedom to burn gas and sit in endless traffic jams.

One day, the whole world will be full of smog like Los Angeles. Then Carmageddon will be upon us... And then Jesus will descend upon us through the smog.

That's what you believe, right?

[Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher]

I'm with you, Jeff, but I'm lazy to describe life in a city in which
you have to spend hours only to go and come back to/from work. That's
because Europe is old, old cities, without space to park, to drive.
Cities in which people can only drive in, half of the cars per day,
i.e. Do you want to walk on a rainy day? It's ok wherever you are.
However I'm with the idiot in one and only one thing: a SUV for normal
urban use is a waste of gas, and the vehicle doesn't perform as well
as a normal vehicle, a car. Too much iron, is a dead inertial weight.

But that's not your decision to make for me, or anybody else. It is your
decision to make for you. I drive a pickup truck for my work, so I am
well aware of how my SUV will behave, and my wife and I made a decision
that's right for us. It's not right for you, I get that. But I'm not
telling you to drive an SUV, you're telling me not to drive one. I have
a convertible to drive if I want a small car, and a small SUV for when I
need more room.
It's not your call on what I drive, and certainly not the call of our
resident idiot, the wise monkey humper. I have to wonder how wise the
money is that lets this idiot hump him, bit I digress.

You are right, you spend your money in whatever you want.
That's fair enough. And wise, according to Adam Smith and
all the orthodox economists after him.

Not so. The SUV became a public threat for mundane cars. It introduced the law of the jungle to the roads.

Where's the need for SUVs if not for the deserts and jungles of the world? I get it. America is both.

[High Miles]

Post by Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher

I'm with you, Jeff, but I'm lazy to describe life in a city in which
you have to spend hours only to go and come back to/from work. That's
because Europe is old, old cities, without space to park, to drive.
Cities in which people can only drive in, half of the cars per day,
i.e. Do you want to walk on a rainy day? It's ok wherever you are.
However I'm with the idiot in one and only one thing: a SUV for normal
urban use is a waste of gas, and the vehicle doesn't perform as well
as a normal vehicle, a car. Too much iron, is a dead inertial weight.

But that's not your decision to make for me, or anybody else. It is your
decision to make for you. I drive a pickup truck for my work, so I am
well aware of how my SUV will behave, and my wife and I made a decision
that's right for us. It's not right for you, I get that. But I'm not
telling you to drive an SUV, you're telling me not to drive one. I have
a convertible to drive if I want a small car, and a small SUV for when I
need more room.
It's not your call on what I drive, and certainly not the call of our
resident idiot, the wise monkey humper. I have to wonder how wise the
money is that lets this idiot hump him, bit I digress.

You are right, you spend your money in whatever you want.
That's fair enough. And wise, according to Adam Smith and
all the orthodox economists after him.

Not so. The SUV became a public threat for mundane cars. It introduced the law of the jungle to the roads.
Where's the need for SUVs if not for the deserts and jungles of the world? I get it. America is both.

Getting to assorted job sites in snowy or floody weather.
Never harmed ary pedestrian or vehicle in twenty years driving one.

[Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher]

Post by High Miles

Post by Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble Philosopher

I'm with you, Jeff, but I'm lazy to describe life in a city in which
you have to spend hours only to go and come back to/from work. That's
because Europe is old, old cities, without space to park, to drive.
Cities in which people can only drive in, half of the cars per day,
i.e. Do you want to walk on a rainy day? It's ok wherever you are.
However I'm with the idiot in one and only one thing: a SUV for normal
urban use is a waste of gas, and the vehicle doesn't perform as well
as a normal vehicle, a car. Too much iron, is a dead inertial weight.

But that's not your decision to make for me, or anybody else. It is your
decision to make for you. I drive a pickup truck for my work, so I am
well aware of how my SUV will behave, and my wife and I made a decision
that's right for us. It's not right for you, I get that. But I'm not
telling you to drive an SUV, you're telling me not to drive one. I have
a convertible to drive if I want a small car, and a small SUV for when I
need more room.
It's not your call on what I drive, and certainly not the call of our
resident idiot, the wise monkey humper. I have to wonder how wise the
money is that lets this idiot hump him, bit I digress.

You are right, you spend your money in whatever you want.
That's fair enough. And wise, according to Adam Smith and
all the orthodox economists after him.

Not so. The SUV became a public threat for mundane cars. It introduced the law of the jungle to the roads.
Where's the need for SUVs if not for the deserts and jungles of the world? I get it. America is both.

Getting to assorted job sites in snowy or floody weather.
Never harmed ary pedestrian or vehicle in twenty years driving one.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for certifying SUVs that do a real job.

If you carry cows around, you are in.