Fla. 8-Year-Old Gets Traffic Ticket For Bike Mishap (irresponsible idiot parents refuse to pay)

In article ,
says...
frkrygowHALTSPAM wrote:

Rick Onanian wrote:

On Fri, 07 Nov 2003 16:42:31 -0800, Zoot Katz
wrote:

Consider that there are more cars than licensed drivers.

That's because some people have a truck for when they need to truck
stuff, and a car for when they don't...

Apparently, some people have never heard of utility trailers.

1. How big a trailer can a Honda Civic pull?

Probably rated at 1000 lb towing capacity, like my Ford Focus.


2. Owning a truck for occasional usage is socially conscious -- it
keeps it out of the hands of somebody who would drive it every day.

Hardly; it just lets the manufacturers build more of them. (Yes, I
know that was a joke, but I chose to respond as if you were serious).

--
Dave Kerber
Fight spam: remove the ns_ from the return address before replying!

REAL programmers write self-modifying code.

"frkrygowHALTSPAM" wrote in message
...

I suppose my vision of New Urbanist design may be different than yours.
(And I'm not sure what features would be on the "official list", I
admit.) But I see no reason that the problems you list _must_ exist in
this design scheme. For example, can't open space for kids and presence
of trees be easily designed in? One could call such spaces "parks."
Wouldn't local, walkable schools provide a sense of community, and
wouldn't summer concerts in the parks do the same? They do in my
village... and so on.

The need for shade trees isn't in the parks, it's to shade the homes from
summer heat. The "yards" in NU communities are designed to be small.
Planting a tree which will grow large enough to mitigate the effects of
solar gain will result in a tree that also messes up the sidewalk, messes up
the irrigation system, and can cause foundation problems. Open space in the
system is restricted to small parks, many of which are also used as water
detention facilities for mitigating floods. All of the "features" of New
Urbanism are easily thwarted by bad developers and result in a community
that has the NU facade, but is really lacks the underlying design to
function as a NU community was intended to. I've seen many examples of this
happening.

NU designs focus on a central business area which is within walking distance
of all the entire community. Early NU communities based on this design
discovered that the businesses usually failed - primarily because of a lack
of traffic. Newer designs either split the community with a major
thoroughfare which served the central businesses or used a half-moon shape
adjacent to a major road. These worked better because the businesses had
access to a major road and higher traffic counts, but they also suffered
because either NU design restricted parking or the parking interfered with
the walkability of the community. It also disrupted the function - people
would just drive to the store anyway.

Ah well. Perhaps we should get back to talking about cycling.

An emphasis on cycling would make the NU design work much better. People
these days don't want to walk - especially when they have to carry a load.
Design the homes with great access for bicycles (a wide door into the
garage, storage space for bicycles, etc.), the community to be
bicycle-friendly, and provide a couple of free utility bikes with baskets
for the homeowners, and a NU community might just work.

-Buck

On 09 Nov 2003 00:59:09 GMT, David Reuteler
wrote:
Rick Onanian wrote:
: I so wanted to walk, but they wouldn't allow it. I had to take the
: bus with all those other assholes.

the, uhh, short bus?

Even that might have been an improvement. I could have been king of
that bus. Nope, the long bus, full of more normal assholes.
--
Rick Onanian

On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 05:52:56 +0000 (UTC), (Steven M.
O'Neill) wrote:
However, the outcome would have been _exactly_the_same_ if the car
had been parked, except we wouldn't have this discussion.

So you're saying the driver should get off with a ticket for
parking illegally?

Driver should "get off"? What did he do wrong? The kid should be
LUCKY that he gets off with a ticket for _carelessly_ jumping his
bike into the street. What do you think would make it illegal for
the driver to park on that street? Is it a state highway?
--
Rick Onanian

On 09 Nov 2003 06:35:28 GMT, (Hunrobe) wrote:
Zoot Katz
How many
unsolved hit-and-run injuries and deaths are on police files?

Too many I'm sure. Many hit-and-run crashes- especially fatal ones- have no
witnesses. How does that have anything to do with your claim?

I can guess: If a rule went into place that anybody involved with
any motor vehicle that was involved in an accident with somebody not
in a motor vehicle lost their license forever without due process,
we'd have a whole lot more hit-and-run. Nobody would stay around
and take unfair "responsibility".

The current system is not working as a deterrent to reckless and
dangerous driver behaviour.

The proposed system would result in most crashes being hit-and-run,
with lots more deaths and coverups.

If I understand your point correctly then, what you are saying is that since we
can't identify, arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate an acceptably high
percentage of reckless and/or criminally negligent drivers we should simply
assume that all drivers are reckless and/or criminally negligent. That's
somewhat similiar to saying that since too many rapists are not punished for
their crimes we should make up for that by assuming that all sexual intercourse
is rape and incarcerating people for engaging in consentual sex.

Actually, we'd have to assume that anybody with genitalia, hands, or
a mouth is guilty of rape.

Regards,
Bob Hunt
--
Rick Onanian

On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 01:13:17 -0800, Zoot Katz
wrote:
I'm saying there's a cultural prejudice in favour of driving that
effects how law enforcement and the courts handle the cases. It
effects how media reports traffic fatalities which in turn effects how
the masses think (don't think) about the actual and preventable
horror.

Zoot, it sounds to me like you dislike the culture and the legal
system, as well as the masses, in your country. That's a lot to
dislike and still stay. What's so compelling about it that you stay
despite those major issues?

It's almost like somebody who stays in an abusive relationship.

Personally, I love my country; the major stuff is ok; the minor
stuff is within my reach to have an effect; and there's lots of
opportunity to have the life I want.
--
Rick Onanian

"Zoot Katz" wrote in message
...

Devoting so much space to the car spreads the city out further and
makes car ownership even more necessary and inevitable. As we spend
more on roads, bridges and overpasses, we have less to spend on public
transit infrastructure to nodes of higher density mixed use
developments. There could have been more pumpkin patches in green
belts between population nodes instead of strip mall parking lots.

Even when we have public transportation in place, people don't want to use
it. Look at the failure of the BART system, or the more recent light-rail
system in Dallas. We also know that preserving open space, while necessary,
comes at a social cost that many cities were unwilling to pay in times past.
It's hard to ignore property owner's rights, especially in the U.S. Forcing
an owner to give up the economic value of his inner-city property so it can
become a park is a sticky political issue that many aren't willing to
tackle. And the city's coffers aren't big enough to provide fair-market
value.

Now we can agree on the need for more mixed-use development. There are some
market segments that can utilize it. But if you are thinking that we should
have scrapped suburbia in favor of only mixed-use development, you are
ignoring market needs. On the ownership side, there is a market desire for
homes with private yards. On the commercial side, there will always be a
market need for high enough traffic voumes (whether by foot, bicycle or
auto) to support the businesses, especially in these markets with smaller
margins. This is why businesses are concentrated around larger collector
roads. Place them on a smaller secondary road and unless they are within a
niche market which will seek them out, the business is doomed to fail
because the competition is on the main road.




When the houses are all spread out to make room for
streets and driveways, the land requirements are greater, therefore
more expensive. Because the building lots and houses are larger to
accommodate the cars, they're more expensive too.

There may be slightly higher costs in infrastructure and materials, but the
land costs at the periphery are so low that you can buy much more home per
dollar in suburbia than you can in the inner loop. You also ignore the
increased costs of building materials and construction complexity when
building multi-story housing in an urban area. The only way to offset the
increased costs of building and land is to increase density (greater number
of living units per lot). This results in a living situation that is
obviously undesirable to a majority of the population. And if we have to
build at higher densities, we cannot include those gardens that our houses
are supposed to be designed around!

When the first household expenditure surveys were conducted in 1901,
(cycling's heyday) transportation accounted for less than 2 percent of
the family budget - now it is 18 percent and rising. With
transportation costs eating up a bigger percentage of household
budgets, saving for a home becomes increasingly difficult.

We can blame much of this on the manufacturer unions and our general
greediness in this modern society. Everyone wants to make as much money as
possible, and unions can enforce pay rates. This is why a guy who picks up a
brake caliper and bolts it onto a car can make $35 an hour. And we wonder
why our manufacturing base is leaving the country?

The utopia that a few people around here envision is not the utopia for
everyone. I like cycling and even commuting by bike, but I'm not willing to
give up the amenities of suburbia. I think that small-town USA is more like
what everyone wants. It's small enough to have few traffic problems, small
enough to bike in, small enough to know your neighbors, but needs to be big
enough to have a local economy of some measure. I grew up in a town like
this. Living in the suburbs of a big city is not quite the same, but is
close enough for now.

Thinking about all of this does make me wonder about your living situation,
Zoot. Does your home share a wall with someone else's? Do you have any kids
to think about? How much access to open space do you really have?

-Buck

On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 12:11:06 -0500, "frkrygowHALTSPAM"
wrote:
Rick Onanian wrote:
That's because some people have a truck for when they need to truck
stuff, and a car for when they don't...

Apparently, some people have never heard of utility trailers.

What do you suppose the towing capacity of a Toyota Prius is?

I know that my Pontiac Grand Am v6 was only listed for 1000 pounds
-- wtf can I tow with that? Sorry, a utility trailer weighs most of
the capacity of a compact car's towing ability (the 4 cylinder
version, btw, is not rated to tow _anything_).

Back when a small car had a body on frame (like a modern truck) and
could be had with a v8, you could probably tow useful trailers.

Finally, who wants a road full of small cars with light-duty brakes
towing rotted trailers with leaking tires just to get some furniture
(or a family-sized load of bicycles) home from the store? You know
how good the drivers are now, that they are so dangerous (at least,
in the context of this discussion; they get much safer when we
discuss helmets)? Now imagine them towing trailers, too!
--
Rick Onanian

On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 16:49:13 -0800, The Real Bev
wrote:
Rick Onanian wrote:
wrote:
What? Do you have any idea how much space it takes to keep a car at
your house? None, on most streets; you're welcome to park in the
street, and parking in the street doesn't suck. If you want to park
on your lawn or cut a driveway in it, you can;

I wish! No overnight parking, no parking between 7-9 and 4-6, and you
can get in all kinds of trouble by parking your car on your front lawn,
and a few other kinds for having more cars than The City Fathers think
you should have. And what's really crappy is that I live in the next
best thing to a slum.

Well, I was under the impression that we were talking about suburbs,
not one-step-above-a-slums.

Every suburban street I've seen allows 24 hour parking for
residents; even city streets in residential areas allow it, but they
require that you get a permit (presumably to gather some additional
tax, as well as making it easier to enforce -- no permit, must not
be a resident).

I've never heard of trouble from parking your car on the lawn; how
do they differentiate between a lawn and an unpaved driveway?

Garage space, unless you're really rich, is much too valuable to waste
on car storage. The damn things have waterproof paint, why do they need
their own rooms?

I agree, but I was pointing out how it affects the cost of a house.

It's a totally contrived and manipulated way to live.

Note the quotes -- Zoot wrote that.

I don't want to live in an apartment. I've lived in one and I hated
it. I want to live as far away from my neighbors as possible, even if
our yards are 50x150, and every once in a while I want to grow some

100% agreed.

flower. If everyone feels like I do, the automobile is pretty
essential. So be it. Rather than whining because people like to drive
cars, wouldn't it make more sense to devise a system where it didn't
hurt?

Actually, I figure it makes more sense for those who hate car
culture, the legal system that caters to it, and the masses who love
it, to move somewhere where those fundamental issues don't exist.
--
Rick Onanian

On Sun, 09 Nov 2003 22:43:13 -0800, Zoot Katz
wrote:
Sun, 09 Nov 2003 16:49:13 -0800, ,
The Real Bev wrote:
If everyone feels like I do, the automobile is pretty
essential. So be it.

Were the automobile designed to be essential, we wouldn't have plushy
macho-toy trucks and boombox low-riders. No, automobiles are designed
to be consumable tokens of ones social standing and promoted as ones
ticket to instant freedom and assured breeding success.

If winter boots were designed to be essential, we wouldn't have
leather or camouflage boots available...they'd just be plain rubber.
If housing was designed to be essential, we wouldn't have raised
ranches or colonials, just cinderblock apartment buildings. Etc.
--
Rick Onanian