One of the characters says "Have you ever noticed how driving makes you stupid?"
In my mind, one of the main problems of driving is that it gives people the illusion that they're free.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- On Wed, 09 May 2012 18:38:14 -0400 shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure about NYC, but when I took the League of American Bicyclist
> training which is based on the Uniform Vehicle Code for the nation, the UVC
> is built on the assumption that no road user is privileged due to the kind
> of vehicle they use - whether motorized or not.
Yes, that's the theory -- even-handedness. The practice is another matter of course. But at this point even the theory is bad.
(This is a question of policy rather than politics, which I usually shy away from, but thought experiments have their uses.)
So if I were making policy I would definitely privilege non-motorized peds users dramatically over motorized ones; and people without wheels dramatically over people with wheels. On the principle that he who creates the risk bears the burden of responsibility.
There are a million other reasons to penalize driving, of course -- not least among them the fact that it's a deeply antisocial and infantilizing activity. I'm convinced that spending so many of our waking hours in a car is one of the things that makes Americans so crazy.
-- --
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.
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