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Comment by zerebubuth | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if part of the problem might be a natural tendency to generalise bad behaviour of a small number onto the whole group?

For example, I might see several instances of individual cyclists running red lights and generalise that to "all cyclists run red lights". Or see several instances of individual motorists "dooring" cyclists and generalise that to "all motorists are dangerously inconsiderate".

It's probably easy to go from that generalisation to an overt dislike of the other group. Therefore, I try to force myself to attribute bad behaviour to the individual rather than any groups they might be a member of.

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Part of it is that it's a necessary mindset. When cycling, you have to assume that every driver is trying to kill you and every parked car is waiting to throw a door open and knock you off (and possibly kill you). Even where malicious intent is lacking, distracted driving is such a pervasive problem that you have to adopt a mindset of "everyone else is awful"....because statistically speaking, enough of them really are.

I think there's a big difference between "everyone else is awful", "there's statistically enough awful individuals" and "every driver is trying to kill me". Only the last one of those is going to lead me to incorrectly blame a whole group.

I agree that a statistically significant subset of drivers cause problems (and a statistically significant subset of cyclists, too), but the vast majority of individual drivers (and cyclists) are safe and do not deserve to be grouped in with the the problem-causers.

They have to be grouped in, as there's no way to differentiate them.

Also, you're proposing a false equivalence. When drivers cause problems, other people (pedestrians, cyclists, other drivers) die. When cyclists cause problems, they're usually the only ones that get hurt. The urgency of the two problems is dramatically different.

I really wish "a bike running a red light" wasn't seen as such a problem. In many places, pedestrian cross on red lights also. In other places, cars can turn right on red lights. In at least one state, bikes can use red lights as stop signs, and stop signs as yield signs. It is easy run a red light on a bike (or as a pedestrian) in a safe manner, but it often isn't in a car.

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