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Comment by yodelshady | Hacker News Reader

That's actually pretty amazing work.

Being super preachy, as a cliched straight white etc etc... after riding a bike I sort of get complaints about -isms, emotionally, in a way I wouldn't without.

Everyone has already concluded that you deserved it. Whatever happened. It does not matter if you were wearing hi-vis, or had a light, or were in a bike lane, or the nearest bike lane is 5 miles away and on the pavement for some reason, or were 3.1 ft from the kerb or 2.6. If you were stopped at a red light and are now sprawled in front of it because a van didn't, you're clearly lying. If a motorist jumps a set of temporary lights and hit you when you had the green, you're clearly lying. You deserved it, always and forever, is the only argument you need to know, the rest is window dressing.

Now we wonder why kids don't get exercise.

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Yes, I have experienced "blame the victim" as a cyclist as well..

Traveling down a well-lit street at night, lights on my bike front and back, approaching a four-way intersection, green for me, a car turning left across my path stopped its turn mid-intersection, yielding to my right-of-way allowing me to proceed. Meanwhile, the car behind it filled with drunken women goes around the yielding car to turn left... into me, on my bike. I was luckily agile enough to leap clear as my bike went clattering away beneath me. I was unhurt though, obviously, shaken.

The driver of the car that hit me came running over to the sidewalk where I sat down and started yelling at me for riding at night. And for not wearing a helmet. "You could have been killed!" she said. I am not making this up. Then she fled.

Division and Brannan street, SF, about 12 years ago.

It's also possibly for some of the same reasons: baseline expectations coalesce around some predominate experience (shared social experience / shared road experience) that becomes the default, to the point where it becomes difficult to imagine a different experience unless you've shared it, much less validate and address that experience.

I don't currently bike but once upon a time that was how I usually got around Los Angeles and boy was it eye-opening. And yet, as someone who's primarily been a motorist and pedestrian since, sometimes I catch myself forgetting.

I'd love to hear even one anecdote of 'kid believes bikers are unfairly blamed for accidents' -> 'kid decides never to exercise again in any form'

Its more the realization that you aren't safe, and that your safety is not only not a priority but somehow actively repugnant, all due to you being on a bike.

If you are a kid driving isn't an option. If you don't feel safe on the roads as a pedestrian or bicyclist then your options are rather limited. This was my own experience, and if I had been less reckless I would have gotten less exercise. As it was, telling some one about a scary experience like a car almost hitting me was usually almost always met with a story about how terrible cyclists are. Its weird.

Color me unconvinced. Kids know that skateboarding isn't safe but I see plenty of kids skateboarding, many of them without helmets! Generally speaking, I think kids are insensitive to risk and think they're invincible. When weighing the risk of cracked skull against looking uncool with PPE, they often forgo the PPE.

I think perception of physical danger is low on the list of reasons why kids don't get as much exercise as they should. Lower on the list than helicopter parents, "stranger danger" paranoia, and the appeal of video games.

>>and if I had been less reckless

Yes, you see kids behaving recklessly. You don't see the less reckless kids behaving that way. It is really not a surprise, right? Some kids, I'm sure, don't skateboard or bike because on one hand there is a social pressure to not wear a helmet but on the other hand they don't want to get their skull cracked.

'Perception of danger' was probably my primary criteria as a child for selecting activities. Why do you think children don't think about this? Do you remember being a child?

> Do you remember being a child?

Heh, I remember laying down on my skateboard and riding it down hills headfirst without a helmet when I was a kid. Like most children, I was invincible.

>Like most children, I was invincible.

No, like most children you knew. The quiet or more risk averse ones weren't out tearing shit up like we were.

Besides, lets get back to brass tacks here. Currently your argument is that bike safety isn't important because kids feel invulnerable, which is sort of untenable. Road safety is important, and to get back to TFA, I think its important that when describing collisions between bikes and cars some of the onus is placed on the person piloting the car. I find it suspicious that there is a concerted lack of transparency in this regard.

Sounds like you should cycle in safer places then? Airline pilots don't complain because highways aren't a safe place for planes to be, and similarly it can be pretty dangerous to ride a bike in a place where cycling is an afterthought. Shifting the blame back to the drivers doesn't change that, if anything it tarnishes the reputation of cyclists even further. I get a similar feeling when I see people on Hacker News complain about how many DAUs Facebook has: making people feel worse about their online time isn't improving the status-quo, if anything it's making their alternative look more attractive by comparison.

Bad infrastructure is an infrastructure issue. Trying to gussy it up as a social one is going to be a really tough case to make when there are actual human rights violations happening in-media-res.

> Bad infrastructure is an infrastructure issue. Trying to gussy it up as a social one is going to be a really tough case to…

Last I checked infrastructure spending was mostly dictated by social policies. Either that or we’ve had generations of truly incompetent infrastructure planners who have all failed to realise that drivers in cars aren’t only people who need to get from A to B.

Sounds like you've answered your own question there.

I think articles that highlight terrible driving would help the growth of the idea in drivers that maybe they need to take care more around bikers. If you're a driver and the articles seem to be blaming the bicycles, you won't change your behaviour. But if you read how a driver goofed up and hit a bicycle, maybe you'll pay more attention the next time your car is near one.

This is a masterclass in horrible logic. Every sentence either starts with an incorrect premise (e.g. that roads are only for vehicles) or makes extraordinary leaps in order to conjure a conclusion. Well done?

You might be mistaken if you think that there are just easy, safe places to bike for pleasure let alone as a principle form of transportation in most parts of the country. I live in a place now where it isn't perfect, but where I grew up (and had little agency to affect my locale!) it just didn't exist.

I'm sort of in that situation now, though not a kid. I biked around all the time as a kid and in college, but for some reason it's a lot scarier when I do it now, even in areas with not so much traffic. So I don't bike any more, and miss out on a lot of exercise. Weirdly, in the old days I never felt like I needed a rear view mirror when biking, but now I always worry about cars coming up behind me without my noticing. I don't know what has changed.

More like 'parents won't let kid ride more than block from their house'.

And so we get stuff like this:

https://www.engadget.com/little-tikes-smart-stationary-bike-...

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