On 2008-01-10, Elmo (aka Bruce)
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea:
Adrian wrote:
BT Humble writes:

deejbah wrote:
Police have 'launched a safety 'blitz''
(http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...09/2134767.htm) on
cyclists failing to obey road rules, using the number of cyclists
killed in accidents deemed the responsiblity of someone driving a
motor vehicle as a bizarre justification for the 'crackdown'.

Fair point. However, doesn't it make it much more difficult for our
various cycling lobby groups to claim the tactically valuable Moral
High Ground when car commuters get to see cyclists brazenly breaking
road rules every day?

Car commuters see cyclists "brazenly" breaking road rules every day yet
fail to far larger numbers of car commuters breaking road rules every
day.

"Car commuters"? Which ones? Aren't you stereotyping car drivers? Is it
every car driver or just a very small minority? You're basing your
opinions on car commuters with the same generalization that you accuse
"car commuters" of making.

Well, it's pretty close to everyone.

Watch an average busy intersection with traffic lights, as they turn
amber. Count how many cars go through the amber and red light when it
was safe for them to stop.

That's at least how many people are willing to run red lights. The
first person to stop may have stopped because
1) They were law abiding
or
2) They were so far behind the previous cars that they couldn't
possibly justify to themselves blatantly breaking through the red
light that late. If they were just a moment earlier, they would have
happily gone through the red light, but the traffic has already
started to flow in the other directions

I have been at intersections where I have counted 5 cars in one lane
go through the red. That's about 10 seconds worth, assuming they
weren't also driving dangerously through other means. The 6th car was
too slow, and the cars behind have to then of course stop. That
implies that at least 5/6th (it is a lower limit as per above) of car
drivers at that intersection are happy lawbreakers. Maybe at other
intersections, they wouldn't break the law so blatantly.

If you have a thousand cars go past you and
then have a two "near misses" do you say all car commuters are bad
drivers or just the "very small minority", the 1/500th.

No, you multiply it by how many intersections and potential
interactions (outside of your field of view) are on an average
journey.

--
TimC
"How much caffeine do you consume on a daily basis?"
"Dependink on how you mean? Liquid, solid or gas? " -- Pitr/User Friendly