On Fri, 24 Jan 2014 15:01:35 -0800, Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble
On Wed, 22 Jan 2014 07:24:40 -0800, Wise TibetanMonkey, Most Humble
But there's no excuse whatsoever for the car becoming mandatory in
most
of Western society --particularly in America.
It's the shear _scale_ of the place. On the American scale the distance
you can realistically go on foot, or on a bike is tiny
And yet most car trips are done within 5 miles, very much within reach
of a bicycle. Say you can cut down car travel by 50% it would be
something quite significant.
Your budget and your health will equally be more balanced.
And not even a "Mini"
sized car, but having a Supersized Unnecessary Vehicle to go to the
local supermarket one mile away. Worse, we made China and India join
the
race for a truly globalized polluted atmosphere...
US drivers just don't seem to feel safe in modest sized cars. It seems
to
me there was a lot of propaganda when the competition was between
smaller
European cars and American-made gas guzzlers.
True. But for the same reason they feel unsafe in smaller cars I feel
unsafe on a bike.
Here are some figures from 1999
Mode of transport Deaths per billion passenger km
Air 0.02
Rail 0.9
Water 0.3
Car 2.8
Two-wheeled motor vehicle 112
Pedal cycle 41
Pedestrian 49
In short you have reason to feel unsafe, but you are a _lot_ safer than a
motorcyclist.
As a motorcyclist you may be less safe but you minimize the conflict. You become one of them even if you are at the bottom of the food chain.
The question is if the bicyclist should be on the road and antagonize drivers or on the sidewalk and antagonize pedestrians. If you want to survive it's better to antagonize pedestrians.
Or maybe they should do like the Taliban and openly declare what they don't like. "According to the laws of capitalism a bicyclist is out of place in modern society."
I rather have that. I just want to know what's the place of the bicyclist --and the pedestrian for that matter. If I hit and kill a pedestrian --or they kill me-- is anyone liable? That's a job for lawyers. They want to hear from you when you have an accident.
In any case I can quickly become a pedestrian and drag myself where I easily rode a loaded bicycle before. If you are an effective pedestrian you better carry a handcart --those the old people use. I do that too.
Having just done some googling the evidence seems to be that you _are_ a
little safer in an SUV than a compact car, though you are more likely to
kill someone in another car.
True. But they don't care, do they? You just pretend to be dumb and claim not to realize you were a kamikaze. Nobody will blame you for doing what everybody does.
US consumers to blame for some air pollution from China
Washington — Air pollution from China blows across the Pacific Ocean
and
ends up over the US west coast -- and American consumerism is to
blame
for a portion of it, said a study Monday.
No doubt, but it's hard to blame the Chinese when we got where we are
by
going through a very similar anything goes industrialisation.
They don't have to repeat the same mistakes. After all they know about
climate change and could embrace new technologies along the humble bike,
which is already part of their culture.
The signs are that they are buying cars as quickly as increasing
affluence allows.
Again, the signs coming from Norway are different. Their affluence doesn't translate into car ownership. Perhaps because they've got the highest gas prices in the world.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/
ALeqM5i7a6L3HdpaB4gzbsEPr77m2OwnSA?
docId=dd24d179-4cce-4fba-9177-84cf6d5df496
***
You argue the car has facilitated the industrial/technological but it
has also facilitated the sprawls, deserts with shopping malls.
Agricultural land has shrank and much of the produce comes from the
Third World, chopping down forests.
Transferring some wealth in their direction in the process.
And said wealth is usually kept by an elite, which in turn deposits it
in wealthy stable countries.
Yes, that's true everywhere. But it doesn't mean that our trade isn't
improving the median incomes.
Thus increasing the gap between the powerful and the powerless. The median income in the larger city where I live is very high but the quality of life is very low in the community where I live, I mean unsafe areas and lack of space to walk or ride a bike. Gated communities and high rises are everywhere. There is a real estate boom with money from abroad.
Is that a pretty picture?
But we are so arrogant that we think all this chain of events
--exporting our problems abroad-- will never catch up with us. It
already has. Immigrants also come knocking at out doors. They are OK
with our decaying democracies.
In fact our "decaying democracies" are a magnet for people from
autocracies that refuse to decay.
And from dysfunctional democracies as well. Immigrants from Latin
America are all from dysfunctional democracies --except for Cuba.
I don't call a country a democracy until there has been at least one
peaceful transition of power as the result of an election.
Latin America has been democratic for a while. Mexico even longer, but that doesn't translate into stable countries. The gap between the rich and the poor is not democratic at all. I call a country democratic when the wealth is spread out and safety is not a privilege of the rich.
But more often than not they all come to enjoy prosperity, not
democracy. Most Eastern countries became prosperous under autocracies
--Taiwan, South Korea-- then became democratic.
Pretty close to true here.
Where, the UK? I thought the UK stopped being democratic under Tony Blair.
If democracy means anything, it would have to be respect for cyclists
and pedestrians. It would mean that no gated communities and SUVs are
necessary.
No, the point about democracy is that policy is formed to suit the
majority, who it turns out like the freedom to drive anything they please.
And pollute and kill people with casual disregard? I think there are ways to restrict those privileges while preserving the right to own a car. You may make the driver's license tougher to get and charge a tax at the pump. It would result in fewer, better drivers with smaller cars. Not a bad outcome, right?
And there are other ways to control driving:
http://transit.toronto.on.ca/archives/weblog/2010/05/20-16_ways_to.shtml
Militant non-drivers are a minority, and as minorities tend to under
democracies, you are experiencing a degree of the "tyranny of the
majority." Not that government could, in practice, make cycling safe.
Sorry, you must be talking about Utopia somewhere in the Kingdom of Bhutan. America is NOT a democracy. It's a Republic.
(Read the fine print)
Incidentally, my mother lives in a block of retirement flats, which has
an entry control system for the entire block.
Is that not a "gated community" in miniature?
Does that make it a deep social evil?
Well, perhaps that's a necessary evil. It keeps the predators out. I just wished that other predators --such as funeral homes and politicians-- couldn't reach the infirm and mentally confused.
