General Road and Highway Discussion

[ijmorlan]

Well said.

And I find it conspicuous that Dan still hasn’t answered my question about how he would feel if he found his bike inoperable in the morning.

I'm sorry...was it a serious question?

I'd be annoyed...as I have been annoyed before, both by having my car and bike inoperable.

It was a minor inconvenience when I had to spend 10 minutes pumping up a tire on my car when I picked up a roofing nail before I could get to work...but ultimately, it would be less of an inconvenience because I wouldn't have to go get the tire fixed at a shop.

I'm not really sure what this answers for you...

Of course it’s a serious question. You seem to be saying that it is believable that one of those SUV owners might find their property incapacitated and think to themselves something like, ”hmmm, maybe I should get rid of this vehicle; I’m glad those people were so generous as to give me that suggestion”. But in order to believe this, we have to believe that if you found your bike similarly incapacitated you would think similarly kind thoughts about the people who did it.

Now I’m not you, but I’m having trouble believing that you would consider, even for a second, that you were the problem in that situation. So why would you expect those SUV owners to consider the same possibility?

Also, I have in mind a specific scenario for the anti-bike people, where they are protesting bicyclists on sidewalks driving carelessly and harming pedestrians. I don’t believe we have an epidemic of this problem, but it’s certainly possible that it could be an actual problem in some times and places. In this scenario, I’m not just reversing the damage from SUVs to bicycles: I’m keeping the feature that the activists actually do have a point. In the real situation, it’s true that we have too many SUVs and that some of them are driven inappropriately and that all of them are subsidized (due to the absence of congestion charging and a sufficient carbon tax). In the scenario, we really do have some bikes being driven carelessly on the sidewalk.

But in both cases, individual vehicle operators are not necessarily responsible for the problem. An SUV owner could have limited mobility and need the higher seat in order to get in and out of their vehicle, or could have inherited an old vehicle and decided to use it once a week for trips that really need a vehicle, driving it carefully and appropriately, using public transit for other trips. A bike owner could be one who never causes trouble for pedestrians. So targetting them does nothing to advance the cause but instead just spreads anger and resentment.