On Wed, 9 May 2012 21:48:34 -0400 "Alan P. Rudy" <alan.rudy at gmail.com> frothed:
> The rules of the road are clear
Oh, well, then, there you have it! It Is The Law.
> And so, continuing with your individualistic moralizing,
> you blame drivers for the consequences of the infrastructural
> construction of the country
Not at all; I blame Robert Moses, inter alios. But personally, when I drive, I feel obliged to drive slow and avoid hitting pedestrians, even if they are behaving badly. After all, if individual I kill some individual ped, no reference to Robert Moses or the Vehicle Code is going to ease my individual conscience. I brought the dangerous machine to the party; and I killed somebody with it.
Your mileage may vary, as they say on the Internet.
There is no topic, I mean *no* topic, more tired and predictable than drivers bellyaching about cyclists and peds. Every change that could possibly be rung on this tedious theme has been rung to death over the last eighty years or so. Compared to it, the perennial heat-vs-humidity debate seems as fresh as a daisy and as piquant as a habanero pepper.
Drivers' sense of entitlement is clearly a social artifact; but don't look to lbo-talk for any insight into the phenomenon. Instead, it's all "these-fuckin-asshats", like a foursome of splenetic gor-bellied pensioners in a golf-course locker room.
-- --
Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com http://cars-suck.org
When one does a foolish thing, it is right to do it handsomely.