about f'ing time (bike rule enforcement)

On 2008-08-26, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Aug 26, 3:21*pm, Brent P
wrote:
On 2008-08-26, Peter Cole wrote:

Brent P wrote:

I didn't question the legitimacy of regulation. I question the
concept of driving as a PRIVILEGE granted by government. Trying to
defend why bicycling isn't a privilege but driving is, is far weaker
than realizing that neither is a privilege. There has to be some agreed
upon regulation such that people aren't crashing into each other. This
fact doesn't make either a privilege.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I don't find your arguments logical or
compelling.

Ahh, the 'I'm not satisified'. well, let me know when you can present
some sort of compeling argument for driving being a privilege that
accounts for the various downsides of that condition nor can be applied
to other forms of travel.

I think that's been done well enough and often enoug to satisfy most
rational people. But here it is again:

Most people want government tying *anything* to being allowed to drive?
The REAL ID has created a condition where I have to submit to government
in a way that has NOTHING TO DO WITH DRIVING in order to drive. That's
the problem with making it a privilege. It's open to have anything the
government wants as a condition be attached to it.

Cars and trucks cause tremendous carnage. They are the leading cause
of death of people younger than 30. They cause further problems due
to noise, pollution, and by giving power and anonymity to people who
are too psychologically immature to handle them. Their use needs to
be regulated to maintain a semblance of civilized society.

And this means the government gets to create a national ID card and tie
child support payments and anything else it wants to driving exactly
how? Why should I have to submit to carrying the federal government's
back-door national ID just to drive? How does that lead to road safety?
How does that keep 'immature' drivers off the road. (really,
government's privilege system does nothing to keep the "psychologically
immature" from driving, it screens them out after they've been driving
for a while, which no licenseing coupled with enforcement and punishment
could do just as well)

In another post, you referred to an imaginary "natural right... to
travel by
whatever means they wish..." as if anyone should be free to buy an
Abrams tank for cruising around the neighborhood, or use a cigarette
racing boat to run around Yellowstone Lake. But there is no such
"natural right," and AFAIK no society has ever agreed on such a silly
idea.

I see you remain as dishonest as always Frank. No such thing is implied.
I stated nothing about removing laws on equipment permitted on the
roadway or anywhere else.

BTW, if you want to have a bicyclist paradise, private roads would
be the answer for your village. That way you could ban motor vehicle
travel entirely.

It takes only a few thousand fatalities, serious injuries, near misses
and instances of general obnoxiousness before most societies figure
out that driving must be treated as a privilege. That happened long
ago in America - although there will always be a few who are slow to
catch on.

Not only are you as dishonest as ever, you are as insulting as ever too.
Well Frank, some day you're going to be faced with submission to
government on some issue that has nothing to do with driving to keep
your driver's license. We all will. Those of us who say 'forget about
it' and stop driving and use a bicycle will soon find that bicycling on
the government roads has become a privilege too. It's quite clear that
you don't understand what a privilege really is. Driving is called a
privilege in a '1984' style word play. It conditions people in to
believing the government can require whatever it wants to require for
a person to drive. If you disagree that government cannot require
anything it wants, including absurd things such as loyalty oaths,
surrendering of rights, etc and so forth, then you'll be agreeing that
driving is not a privilege.



http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=privilege
Noun

* S: (n) privilege (a special advantage or immunity or benefit not
enjoyed by all)
* S: (n) prerogative, privilege, perquisite, exclusive right (a
right reserved exclusively by a particular person or group (especially a
hereditary or official right)) "suffrage was the prerogative of white
adult males"
* S: (n) privilege ((law) the right to refuse to divulge information
obtained in a confidential relationship)

Brent P wrote:

This gets off the point I want to make which is why I've kept it in the
background. None of this makes driving a privilege granted by the
government. What does is being repeatedly told it is and most everyone
behaving as it were. It's really a pretty good'1984' style trick that's
been pulled to tell everyone it's a privilege.

Here in Boston there was an incident where a bike courier (off duty)
struck and seriously injured a (jaywalking) pedestrian. The response was
to require licensing and insurance (with displayed registration
numbers). Essentially, that category of bicycling was redefined into a
revoke-able privilege. The reason was public pressure, apparently the
same thing that initiated the first diving licenses (NJ, 1913).

"Right vs. privilege" is kind of a semantic-only distinction. Even
though I don't need a bike license, I'm sure if I was sufficiently
flagrant and considered a hazard, some judge would issue a standing
restraining order to forbid me to ride. Your rights to life, liberty and
pursuit of happiness are all revoke-able if you are convicted of a
serious enough crime.

The deadbeat dad license suspensions strike me as pure expediency. How
else do you punish? Incarceration just makes the cost to society
greater. The same argument applies to national ID & the use of SSN as a
de facto. There are legitimate privacy and abuse concerns, but at the
end of the day you simply have to get the job done. States had a big
problem with child support collections, license suspensions proved very
effective -- expediency, not conspiracy, and a lot of it driven by Joe
Citizen screaming about deadbeat dads (or crazy bike couriers).

Peter Cole wrote in news:1_Tsk.776$5C.224
@trnddc02:

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/1...g19980917.html

During the run-up to the Social Security Act, there was a lot of discussion
about the potential of the SSN to become the "national identification
number." The government spokesmen assured the world that the SSN would
never be used as a national identification number and, I believe, language
to this effect was inserted into the Social Security Act.

Well, we all know how THAT little piece of subterfuge worked out.

Barry Harmon

On 2008-08-26, Peter Cole wrote:
Brent P wrote:

This gets off the point I want to make which is why I've kept it in the
background. None of this makes driving a privilege granted by the
government. What does is being repeatedly told it is and most everyone
behaving as it were. It's really a pretty good'1984' style trick that's
been pulled to tell everyone it's a privilege.

Here in Boston there was an incident where a bike courier (off duty)
struck and seriously injured a (jaywalking) pedestrian. The response was
to require licensing and insurance (with displayed registration
numbers). Essentially, that category of bicycling was redefined into a
revoke-able privilege. The reason was public pressure, apparently the
same thing that initiated the first diving licenses (NJ, 1913).

And you'll see it slowly progress until walking along the public way is
also a government granted privilege. Already government has gained the
power to stop and ID people on foot as it would someone who was driving.

"Right vs. privilege" is kind of a semantic-only distinction.

If we play like we don't know what words mean.

Even
though I don't need a bike license, I'm sure if I was sufficiently
flagrant and considered a hazard, some judge would issue a standing
restraining order to forbid me to ride. Your rights to life, liberty and
pursuit of happiness are all revoke-able if you are convicted of a
serious enough crime.

It's one thing to be convicted of a crime and then restricted as
punishment, it's quite another to be denied because you wouldn't comply
with a government condition that has nothing to do with the task at
hand. The former requires due process the later does not.

The deadbeat dad license suspensions strike me as pure expediency. How
else do you punish?

That's parental government thinking.

Incarceration just makes the cost to society greater.

It's a civil matter between the two parties. It should be handled like
any other dispute over monies owed to one party by another.

The same argument applies to national ID & the use of SSN as a
de facto.

And illegal under the social security act. Another good example of where
the law says one thing but government does another.

There are legitimate privacy and abuse concerns, but at the
end of the day you simply have to get the job done. States had a big
problem with child support collections, license suspensions proved very
effective -- expediency, not conspiracy, and a lot of it driven by Joe
Citizen screaming about deadbeat dads (or crazy bike couriers).

The best form of government for 'getting the job done' is corporatism,
aka fascism. Now, we already largely have that in the USA, because
people decided that they rather have rulers that 'take care' of things.
So, if that's how things are going to be, lets stop pretending about
freedom, liberty, etc and so forth and just openly have a
corporatist/fascist government. Also, there's nothing to say that there
cannot be elections in a fascist system or to even replace the leader.
So people can still have the well limited choices they are used to.

If we want to be serious about freedom and liberty, well things are
going to be a little more difficult to manage, sure. But we'll all be
better off for that effort.

DennisTheBald wrote in
:

On Aug 26, 11:27 am, " wrote:
On Aug 26, 11:26 am, Kristian M Zoerhoff
wrote:



On 2008-08-26, Cydrome Leader wrote:

In chi.general Kristian M Zoerhoff
wrote:
On 2008-08-25, Chicago Paddling-Fishing wrote:

What I might need is that flashlight they were selling at
Costco a while back, sort of looked like the search becon off a
tug boat... while it might be blinding for many, they probably
wouldn't pull out in front of me fearing I was a semi... (I'm
not planning on getting it... one has to pay attention when
riding at night, just because you're on a main street
doesn't mean cars on side streets will respect your
right-of-way...)

Or just buy a real light from Busch & M?ller. They're pricey,
but mine makes me look like a motorcycle, and doesn't blind
oncoming traffic in the process.

and looking like a motorcycle does?

Keeps motorists from underestimating my speed and pulling out (or
turning) in front of me. Especially useful for those 30 mph
descents into the Fox Valley, but I've noticed an almost total
elimination of this behavior on virtually every road I ride.

Odd, I find that motorists pull out or turn right in front of me
pretty often when I look just like a motorcycle as well. At least,
that has been my experience on the 2 on-road motorcycles I've had and
ridden.

Yeah, but think how bad it would be if you had a 3W bicycle light on
the front of yer scooter.

How do these lights show up in urban areas? Is there enough light of a
different nature to make them and the cyclist stand out from the
background clutter of Duncan Donuts and other lights along the road?

Barry Harmon

In chi.general wrote:
On Aug 25, 3:43 pm, Chicago Paddling-Fishing wrote:
In chi.general wrote:





On Aug 25, 12:58?pm, Chicago Paddling-Fishing wrote:
In chi.general max wrote:

Chicago is ramping up RotR and equipment enforcement on cyclists
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...ckdown-webaug2
2,0,3716423.story
Based on a survey in the Logan Square neighborhood between 9 and 11
tonight, about 90% of the cyclists in Chicago don't have any kind of
lighting at all, and damn few (less than 50%) even have reflectors. ?
Out rage us. ? ?
I estimate traffic control compliance much better, at about 80% for
lights, ?but only about 2% for stop signs. ?
Cycling's guardian angels have been earning phat overtime checks in
Chicago. ?I'm truly truly astonished there aren't a great many more
car-bike accidents than there are, and i think, frankly, that a great
deal of the credit goes to car drivers.

Well, a great deal of credit might also go to cyclists for avoiding cars...

I have 2 white lights mounted forward and two red lights facing back. One
blinky in each direction and one solid light in each direction. I wear bright
colored cycling tops (shorts are black) and a bright colored helmet. ?

I have lots of close calls with cars that apparently look right past me (I
ride on a busy street and either the cars come to stop signs and don't see
me or they don't realize how fast I'm going and pull out in front of me).

I spend a good deal of time avoiding other cars, both east and west of
Pulaski...

snip sig

What's with the front strobes? A lot of wrong way riders in my area
have those, it's extremely annoying when they're oncoming. A red
blinkie isn't bad, but the bright white ones are horrible. Flashing
white lights in your face isn't the best thing for vision, which is
kind of necessary to keep from driving your vehicle into things. My
headlight has a strobe mode, but I don't see myself using it unless I
need some sort of emergency beacon some day, and since it's on the
road bike that's unlikely.

The intensity of bike lights isn't that great compared to bright amber
overhead lights we have on Chicago streets.

Good bicycle lights are as bright as some car and motorcycle lights.

All you need to do is ride down a major street like Kedzie or Pulaski at night
to realize how bright it is; I don't need backlighting to read numbers off my
Garmin 305... the lighting is that bright here at night...

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/CitiesAtNight/ (here you can look at
Chicago and a few other city images from space at night)

A car headlight shows up as a large space of light (6 inch diameter or 6x4
I believe for the retangular bulbs) with a large viewing angle to someone
sitting in a car looking at all the reflections you might see on a Chicago
street. For a bike light to be as noticable, it would need have the same
surface area (similar in size and shape to a motorcycle light). Not wanting to
carry a light that size on my bike, I ride with 2 smaller lights, one that is
on solid all the time and one that's blinking all the time. From a visibility
standpoint, it's very noticable, but that assumes that when I'm on my way home
at midnight, the guy is actually looking for someone else and not just thinking
about getting home after drinking at a bar...

It's very workable when I get into a burb as the lighting isn't nearly as
bright, but on major streets in Chicago, because of the light intensity
they don't show up well, either that or folks just ignore stopsigns and
do quick rolling stops ignore lights that look too small to be a vehicle.

In a burb they are great, but
you need something to catch the attention of cars when it's quite bright
on a major street with so many overhead lights.

Much of my riding has been in Boston, where I lived for a while.
Never found the need for strobes, which are illegal, annoying and
cause blinding/disorientation to other road users.

Not at the intensity these are... only complaint i've had was one friend that
I had stopped to chat with asked me to turn it off before he had a seizure...

I added the second lights
(the blinkys) in each direction after many close calls however they don't
seem to have reduced the number...

There you have it - they are not effective in what you are trying to
do. Why continue to use them and annoy/blind/endanger other road
users (including other cyclists) with them?

I rarely see other cyclists on the routes at times I choose to ride...

What I might need is that flashlight they were selling at Costco a while
back, sort of looked like the search becon off a tug boat... while it
might be blinding for many, they probably wouldn't pull out in front of me
fearing I was a semi...

Semi lights are not disproportionately bright, so I don't see how your
thinking works there. Road users shouldn?t be using blinding lights.
This should be common sense.

It's not so much the brightness they emit down the road that is the issue,
it's the illuminated space that one would see looking at it. Bike lights
are flashlight sized pockets of light... blinking tends to draw someones
attention toward it, but a driver driving home at midnight may have had too
much to drink to pay attention...

(I'm not planning on getting it... one has to
pay attention when riding at night, just because you're on a main street
doesn't mean cars on side streets will respect your right-of-way...)

So how does this relate to a reason behind white strobes, or as you
recently brought up blinding spotlights, again?

Wider surface area. A laser is very bright, but one doesn't see it unless
it's pointing directly at you... a bike light that shines straight ahead is
useless if it has a bezel that makes it difficult to see from the side...

A illuminated wide surface area is whats needed so that drivers can separate
the real lights from the reflections off automobile and other surfaces that
the overhead lights reflect off... ride down a city street at night after
it rains with all the puddles and there are 4 times the number of stray
reflections...

--
John Nelson
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chicago Area Paddling/Fishing Page
http://www.chicagopaddling.org http://www.chicagofishing.org
(A Non-Commercial Web Site: No Sponsors, No Paid Ads and Nothing to Sell)

In chi.general John Rappe wrote:
wrote:

Semi lights are not disproportionately bright, so I don't see how your
thinking works there. Road users shouldn=92t be using blinding lights.
This should be common sense.
[...]
So how does this relate to a reason behind white strobes, or as you
recently brought up blinding spotlights, again?

For the record, "chicago paddling and fishing" is a blithering idiot.
Don't expect any logic in his thinking.

How often do you ride a bike in Chicago at night Mr Suburban guy?

Are you even in a close burb or a way way out burb? On Forest ave in Oak
Park the bike lights I have stand out great, but on a major city street,
the overhead lights drowned out much of the light...

--
John Nelson
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chicago Area Paddling/Fishing Page
http://www.chicagopaddling.org http://www.chicagofishing.org
(A Non-Commercial Web Site: No Sponsors, No Paid Ads and Nothing to Sell)

Brent P wrote:
On 2008-08-26, Peter Cole wrote:

The deadbeat dad license suspensions strike me as pure expediency. How
else do you punish?

That's parental government thinking.

Incarceration just makes the cost to society greater.

It's a civil matter between the two parties. It should be handled like
any other dispute over monies owed to one party by another.

Actually, no. If a parent defaults, the state/federal welfare system has
to pick up the slack. It doesn't work that way for car loans. That's why
non-compliance may be a felony.

The Law Today

Today, a child support violator can be prosecuted under Federal law if
the following facts exists: 1) the violator willfully failed to pay; 2)
a known child support obligation; 3) which has a) remained unpaid for
longer than a year or is greater than $5,000 (misdemeanor), or has b)
remained unpaid for longer than two years or is greater than $10,000
(felony) 4) for a child who resides in another state, or 1) the violator
traveled in interstate or foreign commerce; 2) with the intent to evade
a support obligation; 3) if such obligation has remained unpaid for a
period of one year or longer-or is greater than $5,000 (felony). See 18
U.S.C. §228.

The best form of government for 'getting the job done' is corporatism,
aka fascism. Now, we already largely have that in the USA, because
people decided that they rather have rulers that 'take care' of things.

If we want to be serious about freedom and liberty, well things are
going to be a little more difficult to manage, sure. But we'll all be
better off for that effort.

So, which is it? A conspiracy or a lazy populace?

wrote:

His friends and family created a memorial at the place of his
death. A
memorial in such a public place is meant to make the passersby
think.
If the circumstances of his death are not explained, the
implication
is that he was the innocent victim of a crazed motorist, when
instead
he was the victim of his own bad judgment.

I think the implication is that somebody's dead, and somebody else
is sad about it.

I seem several memorials on rural highways. They are more visible
at 15 mph on a bike than at 60 mph in a car.

When I look at a picture of a dead teenager surrounded by plastic
flowers, my first thought is that the accident involved alcohol,
drugs, and/or improper speed on somebody's part -- maybe the dead
teenager, maybe not -- and that there's a set of distraught parents
somewhere.

On 2008-08-26, Barry Harmon wrote:
DennisTheBald wrote in
:

On Aug 26, 11:27 am, " wrote:
On Aug 26, 11:26 am, Kristian M Zoerhoff
wrote:



On 2008-08-26, Cydrome Leader wrote:

In chi.general Kristian M Zoerhoff
wrote:
On 2008-08-25, Chicago Paddling-Fishing wrote:

What I might need is that flashlight they were selling at
Costco a while back, sort of looked like the search becon off a
tug boat... while it might be blinding for many, they probably
wouldn't pull out in front of me fearing I was a semi... (I'm
not planning on getting it... one has to pay attention when
riding at night, just because you're on a main street
doesn't mean cars on side streets will respect your
right-of-way...)

Or just buy a real light from Busch & M?ller. They're pricey,
but mine makes me look like a motorcycle, and doesn't blind
oncoming traffic in the process.

and looking like a motorcycle does?

Keeps motorists from underestimating my speed and pulling out (or
turning) in front of me. Especially useful for those 30 mph
descents into the Fox Valley, but I've noticed an almost total
elimination of this behavior on virtually every road I ride.

Odd, I find that motorists pull out or turn right in front of me
pretty often when I look just like a motorcycle as well. At least,
that has been my experience on the 2 on-road motorcycles I've had and
ridden.

Yeah, but think how bad it would be if you had a 3W bicycle light on
the front of yer scooter.

How do these lights show up in urban areas? Is there enough light of a
different nature to make them and the cyclist stand out from the
background clutter of Duncan Donuts and other lights along the road?

Cheap 3W lights? Don't know, I don't run one. I run a B&M Ixon IQ Speed
that puts out 50 lux (lumens/m^2), and it stands out from *everything*.

--

Kristian Zoerhoff