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Comment by JKCalhoun | Hacker News Reader

Race Across America probably should be outlawed. Like the Cannonball Express it's just dangerous ... dangerous to the riders.

And I am absolutely fascinated by it.

I had not known about it until I past a woman biking across Arizona with a support car following. When I got to the campsite (vacation with the family), I googled and determined she was participating in a race called "RAAM". I couldn't believe it was a non-stop race across the U.S. Sleep, or any kind of rest, is a liability.

I guess I had expected the race to be broken up across a dozen days or so with checkpoints and times taken and added to declare the winner by race's end. But, no, it's just crazy.

And I guess it's the thing that endears me so much to our species.

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I generally agree with others replying that people should be allowed to harm themselves with something like RAAM if they're doing so willingly. However I'm not sure if it's ethical to support others harming themselves. Rides like RAAM have way more support staff than riders.

Doesn't refusing support carry an implicit judgment that the activity they're undertaking is somehow morally inferior? Why is any lifestyle choice superior/inferior to another? I'm not aware of any objective criteria that allow you to rank being a RAAM participant/heroin addict/workaholic/etc. in some sort of order, and draw a cutoff between what you would/wouldn't support. Perhaps you're aware of such criteria and I'm missing something? Otherwise it seems like you're just arbitrarily imposing your personal values system...

In this scenario I'm putting myself in the position of a support staff member. So in that scenario I would impose my personal beliefs on the riders that are harming themselves. Legally they should be able to do what they want. But I wouldn't want to get involved in supporting their behavior. There's a difference between withdrawing active support and providing active impedance.

If you mean I'm imposing my beliefs on the support staff from the perspective of a keyboard warrior - you're also right. But I'm not actually stopping anyone from doing anything. Just stating my opinions.

Basically if your actions cause me empathetic harm I will not involve myself in them.

I'm curious where you'd draw the line. Would you work for Sevmash? How about Purdue? What about a small business that is supporting the owners addiction? More generally, how do you determine where you would and wouldn't work? Do you have a set of rules that I can use to determine the suitability of a given venture?

Personally, I think responsibility for action terminates at the actor, and that economic transactions do not carry with them moral responsibility for the prior or future actions of the involved parties. You should be able to use those axioms to derive quite a lot actually.

> empathetic harm

I've not hear this before, can you elaborate? Surely if you don't believe that you know better for people then you have no reason to feel empathy that they're not asking for, right?

It seems like you have a simple set of rules for determining what you will and won't do, and perhaps what is right and wrong. I don't so I can't play rhetoric with you on this one.

I don't know if they're simple, but I do think everyone's ought to exist and be at least articulable if not consistent, otherwise how do we discuss anything?

Edit: I'm surprised you would dissent to support some endeavor based on your own personal beliefs, but refuse to state or elaborate on the beliefs in question.

Yeah, I was being intentionally alarmist calling for it to be outlawed – I don't actually agree with that myself. I love that people are so crazy to push themselves to the limits that they do.

I would actually like to try bike touring and dream of crossing the entire U.S. by bicycle. But RAAM sure sounds like a drag.

Who are you to moralize/legislate what people should and shouldn't be able to do with their own bodies? These people aren't harming anyone but themselves. Even if just about everyone agrees with you, no one has any reasonable claim to ownership over another's person.

>> These people aren't harming anyone but themselves.

If they’re driving on public roads and are sleep deprived then they are endangering others.

Looks like they're taking reasonable precautions - following car etc. Not sure a tired cyclist is much of a danger to anyone on an open interstate. Seems rather flimsy justification really.

I agree, I don't really think it should be outlawed.

Rather, no one should ever, ever want to do it.

Radiolab did an episode profiling Jure Robič [1], a former member of the Slovenian special forces who took up ultra-endurance cycling and won RAAM 5 times. It's a mind-boggling story. Tragically, Jure was killed by a car while training in Slovenia in 2010.

[1]: https://radiolab.org/episodes/91709-limits

why should it be outlawed if it only affects negatively the people who willingly decide to do it?

While the cannonball express is definitely dangerous to others, if someone wants to ruin their neck cycling across the globe, be my guest who am I to say no

A counterargument could be that engaging in certain reckless behaviors will require paying higher insurance or taxes to cover the inevitable permanent disabilities. Much like smoking premiums.

True but you could make that kind of argument about a lot of things. Like literally anything that could negatively affect one's physical health. So alcohol, sugar, lack of excercise, a non-vegan diet, etc etc.

My point being that if you're going to make that argument, then effectively what you really need to do is make an argument for where specifically to draw that line, and that's a much harder argument to make.

How is that a counterargument? It seems to me that paying more for insurance is perfectly fine for anyone doing extreme activities. You pay more for travel insurance if you do something as simple as skiing (which is actually quite dangerous).

Sorry if I was unclear. My point was that personal injury can become a burden to others too: friends, family, or community may have to support someone injured badly enough. (Which is generally fine, but if folks are knowingly undertaking activities very likely to be debilitating then others may weigh in via insurance, taxes, or even laws.)

If its dangerous only to drivers, and the drivers are aware of the dangers, why should it be banned?

Some people love spending their time doing stuff that is inherently dangerous, even if it means that they might not live as long as the rest of us. And why stop them, seems like hell to be forced to live a long but unfulfilling life. We all die in the end anyway.

Being "aware of" a risk is not enough to make it disappear. It might not be enough to even mitigate it. Why would you think that?

Also, no, most drivers are obviously not aware of the dangers. Anyone on two wheels who wants to survive treats every car driver as a dangerous psychopath until proven otherwise.

You can always accept the risk, even if you can't mitigate or avoid it you can live with it.

Why do you assume that people who are willing to drive for 8 days with around 8 hours of sleep, supported by teams are not aware that there might be some risk involved with driving a bicycle?

I made this point elsewhere, but there are dangerous sports that many people engage in. Skiing is the example that comes to mind. Personally the people I know who ski aren't even particularly serious with the sport, but I personally know of one broken back, multiple fractures, broken limbs (and countless near misses)...should we ban that too?

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