Hacker News Reader

Comment by CodeMage | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, they didn't repeal it because it was racist. They repealed it because the enforcement of it was biased. That's an important difference and omitting it can lead to misinterpretation.

As it turns out, their data showed that the vast majority of people already used helmets. Those who don't are mostly those who can't afford it, and fining them won't make cycling safer for anyone.

The bias in the enforcement was substantial: black cyclists got 4 times as many tickets as white, and nearly half of the tickets were issued to homeless people.

View on HN

Missing in the bias statistics was the rate at which various groups wore helmets. Enforcement bias cannot be inferred without these figures, which were missing from every article I read about it.

It is blasphemous these days to even entertain the thought that there might be behavioural differences between races, so gathering these statistics is like picking the forbidden fruit.

Not only is it not blasphemous, GP literally entertained the thought and stated it as fact.

If you cannot afford a helmet, you are less likely to wear one, and if you get fined for not wearing on, it isn't going to incentivize you to buy one - it's going to render you less able to buy one.

Or perhaps you are suggesting that black people are poorer because their ancestors adaptations to sunlight light have altered the way they handle their finances or respond to those incentives?

In which case, you shouldn't feel like a blasphemer and should just expound on those theories here. Please, don't leave them unsaid because we are just going to have to assume what you think. And we might make the error of assuming that you are just a racist.

Yup, just as expected - four paragraphs accusing me of not being orthodox enough, finishing up with calling me a heretic.

Look up how black people go camping less, how they are better at sprinting than other races, etc.

Do you think a certain race simply not biking that much is so dangerous of a thought, it should be illegal to even think about it and should result in one being called epithets, as you just did?

Ridiculous.

I'm sorry but this appears to be unintelligible word salad? Are you replying to the right comment?

It may not even be that. If, for example, one group rides bikes more often than another group, they may be cited for lack of helmet use more even if the percentage of helmet use was exactly the same and the enforcement was perfectly unbiased.

What they're saying is that there are biases in the sample of the people who got fined. What you're asking is what caused that bias. While that's certainly an interesting question that should be answered for a variety of reasons, answering it is not necessary to conclude that the law isn't doing its intended job.

By this logic, we should immediately repeal all laws. All of them.

You don't repeal laws because someone feels the law is being applied unequally. You fix the problem which causes that inequal problem, thus, resolving the problem for all laws.

Anything else is just people using race to get rid of specific laws they don't like.

Sure, if we apply the same logic out of the context where it was applied in this case, then you're completely right.

However, context matters. The statistics they quoted showed that the helmet use was at 91% in Seattle.

So if you have a law that is punishing up to 9% of the population and you note some pretty ugly biases in the sample of those who get fined, then it doesn't sound unreasonable to conclude that maybe we don't need to be doing that right now.

What's the murder rate in Seattle? 0.0001%?

Do you really want to go down the rabbit hole of discussing just how many fallacies you stuffed in a one-liner? Is that what passes for discourse on HN nowadays?

The claim was, most people were obeying the law, so rather than fix the supposed problem (misuse of the law to target specific categories of people unfairly), just get rid of the law.

Murder has more people obeying that law, therefore, it should be looked at more eagerly with the same optics.

Looking at how only 91% of people are obeying a law, is an absurd and ridiculous method to determine if the law should exist.

You speak of logistical fallacies, but this entire premise is a fallacy.

Fix the problem, fix what leads to inequal application of the law. Removing this law, will not prevent every other law, even the charging of people of colour with murder, which happens excessively as well, when they are innocent.

Ridiculous!

> and nearly half of the tickets were issued to homeless people.

When I see people commit crime in Seattle, the perps are overwhelmingly homeless, so I can’t say I’m surprised.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com