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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   23254 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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It's a little counter-intuitive how cars are far more likely to kill us, but we get more angry at cyclists.

I think it is because most cars are relatively well-behaved and they respect my right-of-way at crosswalks and don't try to buzz me. It's just the 0.1% that is going to blow a stop sign or not yield that might kill me.

While with bikers it is a far greater number that don't respect the rules and will buzz dangerously close to myself and my kids on the sidewalk. They probably won't kill me, but they give me a sense of rule-breaking and fear.

Bikes are less predictable. They can weave, turn, and change speeds much more suddenly than a car. When I'm walking and I hear a car coming behind me, I glance back once to see its trajectory and adjust my path accordingly. When I hear a bike coming quickly towards me, I usually glance back several times to track it since I can't fully tell where the cyclists plans to go.

Or to put it another way, if someone drove a car like many Cyclists ride bikes, they’d get the cops called on them within moments and lose their license.

It's a little counter-intuitive how cars are far more likely to kill us, but we get more angry at cyclists.

Why is it counterintuitive? A car weights 175x the weight of a bicycle, of course it's more deadly.

That's not the counter intuitive part.

Yes, that's what is counterintuitive: of course a car is deadlier, but we get more angry at cyclists anyway.

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