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Comment by dreamdu5t | Hacker News Reader

I'll take responsibility for my life and you busybody do gooders can fuck off.

Let's make helmets mandatory after we outlaw being a fat fuck and eating like shit.

Unfortunately my insurance pays for folks with your attitude. So yes its my business. Unless you want to sign a waiver for bicycle-related injuries? No?

However, it pays substantially less for such folks as it does for the folks such folks are angry about.

Bicycle related injuries are not what any insurance company is worried about, while obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and motor vehicle related injuries actually really are the issues that keep raising the cost of your insurance - you just don't see it that way, because you don't want to take responsibility for the costs your lifestyle imposes on the society.

I'm dreadfully sorry if this has come out as addressed to an individual - speaking epidemiologically, this is absolutely about all of us, collectively. I would never recommend anyone to not wear a helmet, but I would rather see their choice of transport be the bicycle as often as possible, and mandatory wearing of helmet will not help that.

Sorry I got lost in all the prepositions and articles. To be clear, I happen to be a bicyle-rider, who likes to take week-long 500 mile vacations on a variety of human-powered cycles. No obesity here, nor cardiovascular issues. So I'm definitely paying for others' problems of whatever kind.

Your quest for personal perfection, young grasshopper, will not be complete until you accept that others have different preferences, which are just as valid for them as your lycra-clad Lanciness is for you.

Agreed. But I have a hard time believing their priorities include dying young, in a grotesquely deformed body. I think they are plain lazy.

Again with the judgment! While it may be for you, for most people cycling is not an extreme activity. At least, not to the same extent as climbing a ladder or eating a hot dog (two "safe" activities that are actually more dangerous than cycling).

Do you live in the USA? If so, have you been living under a rock? Don't you know that now your insurance pays for everybody, no matter what their "attitude"?

Besides, cyclists are pretty healthy overall, as compared to the motorized-barcalounger operators. If one gets run over, it doesn't cost "your" insurance near as much as the 1500 matching sedentary automobilists with diabetes and heart disease.

I guess that was my point, that insurance pays for everybody.

And its pretty silly to blame a helmet law for keeping people off of bicycles and making them fat. Say they want to ride: they still have to buy the bike, and appropriate clothing, and probably a rack to take the bike someplace safe to ride. The helmet has always been the cheapest, simplest part of my ride to manage.

So, people are fat because they are lazy. Stop blaming helmets of all things.

Where do you live that you need special clothes and to transport your bike "somewhere safe" by car before you can ride?

Good question! It must be very dangerous, if local conditions are worse than any mile of the many "week-long 500 mile vacations" that Joe takes.

> I'll take responsibility for my life and you busybody do gooders can fuck off.

Those 'do gooders' are also the ones that advocate changes to traffic laws to accommodate cyclists, and sponsor cycling lanes, to make the environment safer for your pursuit.

Do you want them to cease that, too?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

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