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Comment by mellosouls | Hacker News Reader

Tbf you only have to go online to the cycling forums, or walk any country shared trail to see plenty of aggression, dangerous control and obnoxious, blinkered behaviour and comments.

Cyclists are just as bad as drivers when it comes to contemplating The Other.

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I'll support this comment from a pedestrian, to whom bicycles present some nontrivial danger. Drivers, however, choose to The Other themselves via driving increasingly larger masses of steel, and IME at least seem to be driving ever more incautiously over time in ways that have consequences further down the weight classes. Almost got creased today, even, crossing a quiet suburban street because somebody blew through a four-way stop without looking dead ahead of them. It's supposed to be a 25mph zone.

"They're talking mess at the poor benighted car havers" isn't going to fly. (Signed, a car haver who walks ~five miles a day; you are all full of sin.)

As a frequent pedestrian in Los Angeles, the hierarchy of people being absolutely furious at me for walking on the sidewalks or using crosswalks goes (in decreasing order of rage): 1. Pickup/SUV drivers 2. Luxury car drivers 3. Other automobile drivers 4. Cyclists with fancy bikes and cycling gear 5. Dog walkers who are paying attention to their phone, not their dog 6. Ordinary cyclists 7. Pedestrians staring at their phones

Cyclists can't murder motorists with their bikes though, can they?

Cyclists can kill pedestrians. It's definitely happened, although I don't know how common it is.

according to the guardian, in the uk, it's extremely uncommon (but not unheard of), only 1% of ped deaths involved a bike [1]. Motor vehicles are WAY more dangerous, and it kind of seems bad faith to suggest anything otherwise - cars are multi-thousand-pound metal boxes that routinely travel at speeds unattainable by all but world-record holding cyclists. The difference in kinetic energy between a car and a bike is massive.

It seems pretty logical to assume to me that you'd almost always have fewer ped fatalities if more people were biking instead of driving.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/08/killer...

Motor vehicles are WAY more dangerous, and it kind of seems bad faith to suggest anything otherwise

The original context was shared country trails; I guess your comment was due to a misreading rather than intentional goalpost-moving but the way those arguing for cyclists seem to leap immediately to deny all and any misdemeanours and bridle at any criticism doesn't help good faith discussions.

The original context was road cyclists; the digression to country trails was to justify aggression and violence towards them.

No, the root of this branch of the cyclist discussion is the country trail; which was highlighted to point out cyclists are just as bad as any other group in their behaviour at times.

Suggesting it was to justify aggression and violence towards anybody is bad faith at best, a lie at worst. Please don't use such tactics here, and certainly not with me.

Drivers are killing 50% more pedestrians per year than 2019.

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