The Star Trek: Phase II episodes are actually really good, except for the first 1 or 2. You probably watched one of those. Watch the newest ones, such as "Enemy: Starfleet", or the ones with the original Sulu and Chekov actors. You will have to excuse some of the acting though; the Kirk and Bones actors are actually pretty decent (esp. the Bones actor), the Spock actors (there's at least 3) are OK, but some of the others are obviously very amateur. Of course, this is an entirely amateur effort, so you have to expect that.
The whole discussion here is about whether biking (in cities really) is safe enough to be feasible generally, and Lumpy suggested some draconian liability measures to make drivers more attentive to greatly reduce cyclist injuries and deaths, which I argued wouldn't work, because lots of drivers don't have any money. You seem to be arguing that they're supposed to have insurance, but this doesn't help anything. They're already supposed to have insurance, yet cyclist/car accidents still always turn out very badly for the cyclist, because of physics, and an insurance payout isn't much use when you're dead or quadriplegic. Drivers are arguably already liable for all the expenses Lumpy listed, at least after a civil lawsuit, but that's not going to help if the driver is poor. If the driver's insurance is going to cover things, that's not going to have the effect Lumpy sought, of making drivers more attentive; drivers' insurance already covers this stuff, up to the policy limits, and drivers suck. So I don't know what you're trying to argue here, really. The presence of insurance isn't helping make drivers safer, it just helps deal with losses when there is an accident. But if the whole goal is to try to get more people to cycle (the thrust of TFA), drivers being insured isn't going to help any. They're already mostly insured, and they drive like idiots and there's lots of accidents, which always turn out horribly for cyclists, so the bottom line is that NO, cycling is not safe as the article asks.
You can't fix stupid, however you can try to legislate against it to a certain extent. As I understand it, in Copenhagen, the bike roads there are exactly that: they're roads, for bikes only. Pedestrians, kids, pets etc. are not allowed to be on them, just like they're not allowed to be on interstate highways here in the US. If we built roads like that here (again, separate from car roads like they are in Copenhagen), and made sure to indicate with signs that they're for bikes only, and put some bike cops out there to enforce the rule, then it should work reasonably well. You don't need a "culture change" to make this work, you just have to invest the money (and zoning) to build proper bike roads, with proper signs and proper enforcement. Yes, there might be an occasional pedestrian on there; BFD, if they get hit by a biker, it's their own fault for being there, and having bike cops patrolling it on occasion (and handing out tickets, which can help pay for things) should really cut down on that anyway. For bikers too dumb to use the facilities available to them, there's nothing you can do but clean up the mess when they git hit by an SUV.
A lot of cyclists probably have their own cars; it's not like there's legions of car-free cyclists out there. They just reserve their cars for trips that are too inconvenient for cycling (bad weather, too much stuff to carry, too far).
Exactly. But insured or not, you're not going to get much money out of a poor driver. Insurance will only pay up to a certain amount, and poor people who have insurance are going to have minimal insurance that caps out very low.
That sounds great and all, and it's not unique to Chicago: NYC supposedly has a really nice bike trail that circumnavigates Central Park, which I'll have to check out eventually. However, that's totally orthogonal to the issue of using bikes to commute, unless you happen to live and work along this trail.
Now obviously, as an alternative to the gym, it's definitely a good alternative on sunny days, if you happen to have one of these within a convenient distance, and you have a way of getting your bike there. For instance, the Central Park one sounds nice, but if you don't live near CP, then how do you get your bike there to use the trail? Ride in NYC traffic? I don't think so. For someone who happens to live very close to CP, it would be a good thing, but not for others (though, if there's bike rentals there, that might be OK).
Yes, I used to think exactly like this too, back when I lived in a small college town. Then I moved to a big city for work, and after having too many close calls, gave up on cycling around high-speed or high-volume traffic. Maybe if I ever move to another small town I can take it up again; either that or if I can ever move to Copenhagen. In big cities in the US, it's suicidal.
Doesn't matter, they contribute lots in income taxes, and if we didn't spend that on $500 per gallon gasoline for the military and million-dollar missiles to kill a few tribespeople, we could easily afford lots of raised bike lanes in large cities.
So you're going to put a large part of the US population in jail? We already lead the world in incarceration, but there's only so much our economy can take before collapsing.
When did I ever advocate hurting cyclists? Maybe you should go read my posts: I love cycling, but I refuse to do it when it's dangerous, which is the case in most places in the US because of cars. I'm only arguing against these idiotic proposals by limosine-riding mayors that more people should risk their lives riding bikes on roads used by speeding, texting SUV drivers.
If any additional resources should be spent, they should be spent on driver education and enforcement of laws that protect all road users from stupidity and irresponsibility.
Except that none of that works. People are going to be stupid no matter what you do, and there's no way to hold them accountable. What are you going to do when someone does something stupid, and a cyclist dies? Put them in jail forever? Good luck with that. Even if you did do that, it's not going to change peoples' behavior much, or magically turn them into excellent drivers. The simple fact is that lots of people just plain suck at driving, and there's absolutely zero you can do to change that. You might as well try to make everyone into an NBA-level basketball player or a Mozart-level musical genius. Not everyone is competent, or can be, but everyone has to be able to drive in most places in the US because that's the way we've set up our infrastructure (stupidly).
Laws with teeth and the enforcement staff to apply them is the only way to do it.
How's that working out for the War on Drugs? Or Prohibition? Rigid enforcement rarely gives the results its promoters are looking for. Most of the time, it's a giant failure when you're fighting against basic human behavior.
Asking for an entirely new bike-specific infrastructure is pointless.
No more pointless than trying to get lots of people to risk their lives riding bicycles among all the speeding, texting SUV drivers and uninsured drivers.
Fitness pros and doctors keep making the same suggestion because there aren't any viable alternatives for most people. Riding a bicycle sounds great until you look at the infrastructure we have, which is horrible and entirely dangerous for riders. (And for going to the grocery store, it's downright nonsensical even if cars didn't exist, because there's no way to carry a decent amount of groceries on your bike.)
Yes, it'd be nice if we could just ride bikes everywhere. It'd also be nice if we had world peace and I had a unicorn that farted rainbows.
And where are you going to find a big lake with a bike path around it (separated from cars) in a major city? Maybe Chicago (I'm just guessing, since it borders a Great Lake), but you're not going to find that in most other US cities, just crowded streets with angry SUV drivers texting and driving.
Probably by planning for it early on, rather than waiting 100-300 years and then saying "let's make our city bike-friendly!!!" after all the real estate is built on. Bike lanes and sidewalks don't take up that much land, unless you've already filled up every available square inch with a building.
Hahahaha... you really believe that? Why do you think "uninsured motorist" coverage exists?
Even for those that do carry liability insurance (the minimum required by law), you're not going to get anything out of them besides the cost to fix your car (or bike, in this case), and maybe $10 or $20k for medical bills. After that, their policy caps out and you're up shit creek, and you have to sue them for more, and as I said before, good luck collecting from someone who makes minimum wage, or worse, works solely under the table.
It's funny how many people have zero clue what life is like for poor people in America.
No, YOU don't get it. Please point to where I EVER said PHP was "well designed". I never said any such thing. I said it was good for certain uses, namely small sites. You're the one that went off on a tangent about good design, something I never said much about and certainly not in favor of PHP, since that's obviously one of its shortcomings. I'm only arguing for usefulness, and good design is not very well correlated with usefulness. For an analogy, look at Phillips screwdrivers. That's a totally shitty design, compared to Robinson and Torx heads, because it's so easy to cam them out. However, if you don't have some Phillips screwdrivers in your tool set, you're not going to be very useful since so much stuff is made with the things. And if you're designing something with screws, you have to consider using them because everyone has Phillips screwdrivers (not so much for Robinson and Torx), and they're at least better than flat-blade screws in most ways. Another analogy would be Ogg Vorbis vs. MP3; if you're releasing music for sale, you'd be pretty stupid to refuse to release it on MP3 even though it's a shitty format compared to Ogg Vorbis, since everyone's familiar with MP3, most people have no clue what Ogg is, and many devices (including everything from Apple) won't play Oggs.
That would require traveling to a civilized country.
Portland isn't that much better; they have a lot of car/bike accidents there too. Yes, it's the most bike-friendly city in the US, but that's not saying much. The US just plain sucks for cycling (and for a lot of other things too, which is why it doesn't qualify to be called a civilized country).
Yes, but even there, why would I want to risk my health getting hit by an SUV moving less than 25mph? I might have a lower chance of death, but I can surely expect serious injuries, a hospital stay, and who knows what kind of maiming, plus later arthritis and other complications from having broken bones. Just having a higher survival rate isn't enough to make cycling an attractive proposition if there's still lots of car/bike collisions.
Ooooh, whoopie! A single bike lane (or a handful) that's separate from traffic in the whole city! That's great if the only places you ever go are along that greenway, but if you ever need to stray from it, you can expect to die or have life-threatening injuries.
You still don't get it. A "good" language by your metric is useless to me if I can't use it on cheap hosting. If I have to pay a fortune or go to a lot of trouble to use a language (because I need a dedicated server with root access or whatever), that's not "good", that's decidedly bad, no matter what you may think of it. You're like a snob that tells everyone to buy a Ferrari or Bentley because $100k cars are all crap. It doesn't matter how "good" something is if people don't have access to it.
In plenty of places in the US, snow and cold temperature are a problem for about 6 months of the year:)
Are you talking cold, or subzero cold? Biking in the 20s (F) isn't that much of a problem, just dress warmly, especially your head (I'm sure someone could come up with an insulated bike helmet for this). Being outside at length in subzero temperatures isn't such a great idea however, but that's not a problem in that many parts of the US, only places like ND, MN, etc. And as I said before, if you live in places like that (and it's not a summer-only home), maybe you should be asking yourself why. I live in the northeast now (north NJ), and it doesn't get below 20F here much at all. It snows some, but nothing major, and it's all plowed up in a few hours, and even so, that only happens a handful of times a year, if last winter was anything to go by (I've only lived here a year). For the rare really crappy day, there's always the bus.
Considering how many people walk around Manhattan every day, I don't know where you heard that. It IS pedestrian-friendly, nominally: there's sidewalks everywhere and most people do walk around the place a lot. It is messy at intersections with pedestrians walking around vehicles that pulled into the crossing paths, but I don't hear about cars hitting pedestrians, or pedestrians having a difficult time getting around safely.
But biking and driving in Manhattan are both very bad ideas. However, this stupid city is trying to push more people into risking their lives on bikes with their idiotic "CityBike" program (rental bikes you can check out and return at many different spots throughout the city). I see a fair number of morons (they look like they might be mostly tourists) riding around on them in the middle of traffic.
This would be a pretty cool city if they'd just close all the streets to car traffic and only allow pedestrians, bicycles, and public transit, along with properly-permitted trucks (for transporting cargo, trash, etc.). But I guess all the assholes who take limos wouldn't like that, so they won't do it. (The other thing that would make it kinda cool would be if they got an army of people with pressure-washers to clean the sidewalks up.)
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The Star Trek: Phase II episodes are actually really good, except for the first 1 or 2. You probably watched one of those. Watch the newest ones, such as "Enemy: Starfleet", or the ones with the original Sulu and Chekov actors. You will have to excuse some of the acting though; the Kirk and Bones actors are actually pretty decent (esp. the Bones actor), the Spock actors (there's at least 3) are OK, but some of the others are obviously very amateur. Of course, this is an entirely amateur effort, so you have to expect that.
What's really shameful is that Highlander (1) and Highlander 2 both had the same director and writers. WTF happened?
The whole discussion here is about whether biking (in cities really) is safe enough to be feasible generally, and Lumpy suggested some draconian liability measures to make drivers more attentive to greatly reduce cyclist injuries and deaths, which I argued wouldn't work, because lots of drivers don't have any money. You seem to be arguing that they're supposed to have insurance, but this doesn't help anything. They're already supposed to have insurance, yet cyclist/car accidents still always turn out very badly for the cyclist, because of physics, and an insurance payout isn't much use when you're dead or quadriplegic. Drivers are arguably already liable for all the expenses Lumpy listed, at least after a civil lawsuit, but that's not going to help if the driver is poor. If the driver's insurance is going to cover things, that's not going to have the effect Lumpy sought, of making drivers more attentive; drivers' insurance already covers this stuff, up to the policy limits, and drivers suck. So I don't know what you're trying to argue here, really. The presence of insurance isn't helping make drivers safer, it just helps deal with losses when there is an accident. But if the whole goal is to try to get more people to cycle (the thrust of TFA), drivers being insured isn't going to help any. They're already mostly insured, and they drive like idiots and there's lots of accidents, which always turn out horribly for cyclists, so the bottom line is that NO, cycling is not safe as the article asks.
You can't fix stupid, however you can try to legislate against it to a certain extent. As I understand it, in Copenhagen, the bike roads there are exactly that: they're roads, for bikes only. Pedestrians, kids, pets etc. are not allowed to be on them, just like they're not allowed to be on interstate highways here in the US. If we built roads like that here (again, separate from car roads like they are in Copenhagen), and made sure to indicate with signs that they're for bikes only, and put some bike cops out there to enforce the rule, then it should work reasonably well. You don't need a "culture change" to make this work, you just have to invest the money (and zoning) to build proper bike roads, with proper signs and proper enforcement. Yes, there might be an occasional pedestrian on there; BFD, if they get hit by a biker, it's their own fault for being there, and having bike cops patrolling it on occasion (and handing out tickets, which can help pay for things) should really cut down on that anyway. For bikers too dumb to use the facilities available to them, there's nothing you can do but clean up the mess when they git hit by an SUV.
A lot of cyclists probably have their own cars; it's not like there's legions of car-free cyclists out there. They just reserve their cars for trips that are too inconvenient for cycling (bad weather, too much stuff to carry, too far).
Exactly. But insured or not, you're not going to get much money out of a poor driver. Insurance will only pay up to a certain amount, and poor people who have insurance are going to have minimal insurance that caps out very low.
Most of the buildings aren't.
A little? Your kid isn't going to be happy when you're dead or a quadriplegic because some asshole driving and texting in an SUV hit you.
That sounds great and all, and it's not unique to Chicago: NYC supposedly has a really nice bike trail that circumnavigates Central Park, which I'll have to check out eventually. However, that's totally orthogonal to the issue of using bikes to commute, unless you happen to live and work along this trail.
Now obviously, as an alternative to the gym, it's definitely a good alternative on sunny days, if you happen to have one of these within a convenient distance, and you have a way of getting your bike there. For instance, the Central Park one sounds nice, but if you don't live near CP, then how do you get your bike there to use the trail? Ride in NYC traffic? I don't think so. For someone who happens to live very close to CP, it would be a good thing, but not for others (though, if there's bike rentals there, that might be OK).
Yes, I used to think exactly like this too, back when I lived in a small college town. Then I moved to a big city for work, and after having too many close calls, gave up on cycling around high-speed or high-volume traffic. Maybe if I ever move to another small town I can take it up again; either that or if I can ever move to Copenhagen. In big cities in the US, it's suicidal.
Doesn't matter, they contribute lots in income taxes, and if we didn't spend that on $500 per gallon gasoline for the military and million-dollar missiles to kill a few tribespeople, we could easily afford lots of raised bike lanes in large cities.
So you're going to put a large part of the US population in jail? We already lead the world in incarceration, but there's only so much our economy can take before collapsing.
When did I ever advocate hurting cyclists? Maybe you should go read my posts: I love cycling, but I refuse to do it when it's dangerous, which is the case in most places in the US because of cars. I'm only arguing against these idiotic proposals by limosine-riding mayors that more people should risk their lives riding bikes on roads used by speeding, texting SUV drivers.
If any additional resources should be spent, they should be spent on driver education and enforcement of laws that protect all road users from stupidity and irresponsibility.
Except that none of that works. People are going to be stupid no matter what you do, and there's no way to hold them accountable. What are you going to do when someone does something stupid, and a cyclist dies? Put them in jail forever? Good luck with that. Even if you did do that, it's not going to change peoples' behavior much, or magically turn them into excellent drivers. The simple fact is that lots of people just plain suck at driving, and there's absolutely zero you can do to change that. You might as well try to make everyone into an NBA-level basketball player or a Mozart-level musical genius. Not everyone is competent, or can be, but everyone has to be able to drive in most places in the US because that's the way we've set up our infrastructure (stupidly).
Laws with teeth and the enforcement staff to apply them is the only way to do it.
How's that working out for the War on Drugs? Or Prohibition? Rigid enforcement rarely gives the results its promoters are looking for. Most of the time, it's a giant failure when you're fighting against basic human behavior.
Asking for an entirely new bike-specific infrastructure is pointless.
No more pointless than trying to get lots of people to risk their lives riding bicycles among all the speeding, texting SUV drivers and uninsured drivers.
Fitness pros and doctors keep making the same suggestion because there aren't any viable alternatives for most people. Riding a bicycle sounds great until you look at the infrastructure we have, which is horrible and entirely dangerous for riders. (And for going to the grocery store, it's downright nonsensical even if cars didn't exist, because there's no way to carry a decent amount of groceries on your bike.)
Yes, it'd be nice if we could just ride bikes everywhere. It'd also be nice if we had world peace and I had a unicorn that farted rainbows.
That's what headphones and/or a book are for.
And where are you going to find a big lake with a bike path around it (separated from cars) in a major city? Maybe Chicago (I'm just guessing, since it borders a Great Lake), but you're not going to find that in most other US cities, just crowded streets with angry SUV drivers texting and driving.
Probably by planning for it early on, rather than waiting 100-300 years and then saying "let's make our city bike-friendly!!!" after all the real estate is built on. Bike lanes and sidewalks don't take up that much land, unless you've already filled up every available square inch with a building.
Hahahaha... you really believe that? Why do you think "uninsured motorist" coverage exists?
Even for those that do carry liability insurance (the minimum required by law), you're not going to get anything out of them besides the cost to fix your car (or bike, in this case), and maybe $10 or $20k for medical bills. After that, their policy caps out and you're up shit creek, and you have to sue them for more, and as I said before, good luck collecting from someone who makes minimum wage, or worse, works solely under the table.
It's funny how many people have zero clue what life is like for poor people in America.
No, YOU don't get it. Please point to where I EVER said PHP was "well designed". I never said any such thing. I said it was good for certain uses, namely small sites. You're the one that went off on a tangent about good design, something I never said much about and certainly not in favor of PHP, since that's obviously one of its shortcomings. I'm only arguing for usefulness, and good design is not very well correlated with usefulness. For an analogy, look at Phillips screwdrivers. That's a totally shitty design, compared to Robinson and Torx heads, because it's so easy to cam them out. However, if you don't have some Phillips screwdrivers in your tool set, you're not going to be very useful since so much stuff is made with the things. And if you're designing something with screws, you have to consider using them because everyone has Phillips screwdrivers (not so much for Robinson and Torx), and they're at least better than flat-blade screws in most ways. Another analogy would be Ogg Vorbis vs. MP3; if you're releasing music for sale, you'd be pretty stupid to refuse to release it on MP3 even though it's a shitty format compared to Ogg Vorbis, since everyone's familiar with MP3, most people have no clue what Ogg is, and many devices (including everything from Apple) won't play Oggs.
That would require traveling to a civilized country.
Portland isn't that much better; they have a lot of car/bike accidents there too. Yes, it's the most bike-friendly city in the US, but that's not saying much. The US just plain sucks for cycling (and for a lot of other things too, which is why it doesn't qualify to be called a civilized country).
Yes, but even there, why would I want to risk my health getting hit by an SUV moving less than 25mph? I might have a lower chance of death, but I can surely expect serious injuries, a hospital stay, and who knows what kind of maiming, plus later arthritis and other complications from having broken bones. Just having a higher survival rate isn't enough to make cycling an attractive proposition if there's still lots of car/bike collisions.
Ooooh, whoopie! A single bike lane (or a handful) that's separate from traffic in the whole city! That's great if the only places you ever go are along that greenway, but if you ever need to stray from it, you can expect to die or have life-threatening injuries.
You still don't get it. A "good" language by your metric is useless to me if I can't use it on cheap hosting. If I have to pay a fortune or go to a lot of trouble to use a language (because I need a dedicated server with root access or whatever), that's not "good", that's decidedly bad, no matter what you may think of it. You're like a snob that tells everyone to buy a Ferrari or Bentley because $100k cars are all crap. It doesn't matter how "good" something is if people don't have access to it.
In plenty of places in the US, snow and cold temperature are a problem for about 6 months of the year :)
Are you talking cold, or subzero cold? Biking in the 20s (F) isn't that much of a problem, just dress warmly, especially your head (I'm sure someone could come up with an insulated bike helmet for this). Being outside at length in subzero temperatures isn't such a great idea however, but that's not a problem in that many parts of the US, only places like ND, MN, etc. And as I said before, if you live in places like that (and it's not a summer-only home), maybe you should be asking yourself why. I live in the northeast now (north NJ), and it doesn't get below 20F here much at all. It snows some, but nothing major, and it's all plowed up in a few hours, and even so, that only happens a handful of times a year, if last winter was anything to go by (I've only lived here a year). For the rare really crappy day, there's always the bus.
Considering how many people walk around Manhattan every day, I don't know where you heard that. It IS pedestrian-friendly, nominally: there's sidewalks everywhere and most people do walk around the place a lot. It is messy at intersections with pedestrians walking around vehicles that pulled into the crossing paths, but I don't hear about cars hitting pedestrians, or pedestrians having a difficult time getting around safely.
But biking and driving in Manhattan are both very bad ideas. However, this stupid city is trying to push more people into risking their lives on bikes with their idiotic "CityBike" program (rental bikes you can check out and return at many different spots throughout the city). I see a fair number of morons (they look like they might be mostly tourists) riding around on them in the middle of traffic.
This would be a pretty cool city if they'd just close all the streets to car traffic and only allow pedestrians, bicycles, and public transit, along with properly-permitted trucks (for transporting cargo, trash, etc.). But I guess all the assholes who take limos wouldn't like that, so they won't do it. (The other thing that would make it kinda cool would be if they got an army of people with pressure-washers to clean the sidewalks up.)