Ah FFS I thought we were smarter than you.

Jumpy

Looks like we are not immune to journalist stupidity either.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/roads-are-for-cars-not-lycra-louts-20091028-hkwr.html

blorg

You hear about a lot of this sort of thing coming out of Australia. I love how the author turns one road rage incident into a "lets ban cyclists from the roads" platform.

Interestingly she sees that cycle lanes are often ridiculous:

Most bike paths turned out to be little more than white paint on a road, with no room for a bike between parked cars and traffic. But they sent a signal to cyclists that motorists were somehow in the wrong.

There was a cycleway promised on the North-West T-way, but the reality turned out to be less than cyclists had in mind, with big gaps, traffic lights and intersections along the way.

The obvious solution? Rather than road users exercising respect to each other and sharing the road, ban cyclists entirely.

beans

Just underlines the fact that it's not motorist Vs cyclist Vs pedestrian, it's reasonable people Vs unreasonable people, in pretty much all conflict situations you find yourself in!

tomasrojo

How aggressive do you have to be at 5am, anyway? You never hear of rowers, joggers, swimmers, yoga artists or other dawn fitness devotees attacking people.

From my limited experience of Australian media, it does seem that they don't view cycling as transport, but sport.

People don't generally swim, row, or yoga to work.

Coincidentally or not, Australia has moved ahead of the USA to snag the trophy of most obese nation on Earth.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article4171160.ece

Perhaps they should think of encouraging cycling in some way.

tomasrojo

beans wrote: »

Just underlines the fact that it's not motorist Vs cyclist Vs pedestrian, it's reasonable people Vs unreasonable people, in pretty much all conflict situations you find yourself in!

This Miranda Devine is an Australian version of Michael O'Doherty, some Australian colleagues of mine have informed me.

petethedrummer

I'm calling for a ban on journalism if this rubbish continues.

poochiem

It's the Sydney Morning Herald, the newspaper equivalent of Fox News. She's writing with an agenda to follow or she gets fired.

(formerly owned by Baron Black of the Big House ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Black it's a conservative rag a lá The Daily Heil

ednwireland

moved from offtopic thread more appropriate here methinks

usa today

Two-wheel troublemaking: Have motorists let bicyclist 'rights' go too far?

http://www.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2009/10/620000345/1

sorry cut from other post -fixed

Jumpy

ednwireland wrote: »

moved from offtopic thread more appropriate here methinks

usa today

Two-wheel troublemaking: Have motorists let bicyclist 'rights' go too far?

http://www.usatoday.com/communities/...10/620000345/1

You have to copy the whole URL, not the shortened text.

tomasrojo

The article describes the cyclist as looking like Cadel Evans. He is actually dressed fairly "normally" and is riding a hybrid, I think. The only thing "unusual" is that he's wearing a helmet, which is a legal requirement in Australia. (Leave that can of worms.)

They really like to play on the "otherness" angle, don't they?

As for that US article, they're misrepresenting the "take the lane" tactic. You're only meant to do it when it's unsafe NOT to do so. You're not generally meant to occupy the middle of the lane, and I doubt any cyclist organisation they might have interviewed would have told them that cyclists should occupy the middle of the lane all the time.

Rob_l

In the first case, a driver on the way to work struck a St. Mary's County, Md., bicyclist earlier this month and killed him, police told The Washington Post. The driver, a 20-year-old in her Honda Accord, told police she never saw the biker. But the accident might have been prevented if the 47-year-old bicyclist had been riding in the right, not in the dead center, of the lane, a major contributor to the accident

From that American article, I cant get past this paragraph I don't understand what its trying to say.
Is it really saying that the car driver is more likely to see something to her right than something straight in front of her?

tomasrojo

Yeah, that bit is weird. She certainly seems to be at fault; even if he were in the wrong being in the centre of the lane, she should have seen him.

tomasrojo

Even the title is bizarre: Have motorists let bicyclist 'rights' go too far?

1) Motorists don't decide what cyclists can and can't do.
2) 'Rights' in quotes, as if that weren't quite the right word. (Road users have certain rights; what's the intellectual quandary here?)

thebouldwhacker

I'm a Lycra Lout!

tomasrojo

thebouldwhacker wrote: »

I'm a Lycra Lout!

The image shown may not be to scale.

IM0

petethedrummer wrote: »

I'm calling for a ban on journalism if this rubbish continues.

Id agree, but then again journalism is based on rubbish :pac:

brianthebard

thebouldwhacker wrote: »

I'm a Lycra Lout!

Lol at the huge upper body and tiny legs. Mixing up their stereotypes there I think.