Is it time to start calling out bad cyclists?

Ok gents. Can we go back to tales of shouting at cyclists / kidney punches now please?

'riding like a dick' is entirely subjective. In your scenario, the only person allowed to make that call is the one who can inflict the most damage - the driver. If i ride in primary i'm riding perfectly safely. cuntybollocks in a car behind me interprets that as 'riding like a dick' as i'm holding him up, and proceeds to buzz the next poor sod who takes the lane. slowclap.

Enter your text here...

More likely / less likely? Who knows. You have no other data points other than your own subjectivity, and extrapolating from that is ridiculous, and why the argument is being called out as entirely specious.

I'm no saint. Your initial post made you sound a little cer-ray-zeeee but now you've shone a little more light on what happened...

sounds good

for whom?!

I could. Just because one person on a bike has fucked you off doesn't mean that all people on bikes are cunts. And if someone is too dim to take that into account whilst driving their car then they shouldn't be fucking driving a car.

Must be ace posting from that utopian world of yours....

Enter your text here...
Sounds like you're suggesting that all cyclists have a collective responsibility, and it absolutely is an apologist post for idiots behind the wheel.

Again, it must be ace posting from that utopian world of yours....Tell it to anyone of brown skin trying to live, enter or exit the USA these days.

If you know a way to reengineer this element of human nature why have you not shared it?

The folks that do my nut are those whom just because they were bitten/attacked by a dog in their youth, grow up to be doggists.

DO NOT GOOGLE IMAGE^

.....Cue braking, leaping out the car, posturing, threats, chest bumping etc...
Obviously, it was the fault of the two guys riding two abreast...

For the umpteenth time there is NO disputing that the behaviour of the prick behind the wheel is wrong. But until you publish this amazing scheme you have that alters this foolish mindset, this is what we're stuck with.
Also my stance and this thread will be dead soon. Collective responsibilty for cyclsits will soon be gone. We are heading toward that critical mass where enough people 'get it'.

But it's misplaced responsibility. If that person is a dim-witted asshole then that is their problem and why does anyone else have to try and make amends for that?

O'rly? If some emotionally unstable knobler decides on some dark rd in Poplar on a Sat night to hit me with his Dad's 7 series BMW, whilst his fat passenger leans out of the window yelling fucking cyclist cunt, whose problem does it become? That fat fuck that threw the punches my way for nothing but throwing anti cyclist and racial epithets my; whose problem did that become?
When I had a trainee pushed off her bike whilst riding by a bloke that was clearly fed up with RLJers and cowardly decided to teach her a lesson rightly or wrongly, whose problem did it become? (I thought she was a lot closer to me than she was hence she just followed and ended up rljing.)

It's like if someone you knew got mugged by an some Asian kid and then decided that they hated all Asian kids. You wouldn't think that was ok. Not in this world, let alone an ideal one.

Are you posting from the same postcard as the others? I've looked on google maps and can't find this ideal world of which you speak.

And the answer to that not being ok is for that imaginary person you knew to stop being a racist asshole. Not to go around telling Asian kids that they need to straighten out their act because there's people out there who will judge them as a group rather than on an individual-by-individual basis.
And yes, the imaginary Asian kid did a bad thing and shouldn't have mugged the imaginary person you knew. But not because it would make other imaginary Asian kids look bad and "dear god think of the responsibility you have towards your people", but because mugging people is wrong*.
Similarly, yeah, you shouldn't ride like a dick. But only because riding like a dick is in itself dickish. That's the end of the story. Dick moves are dick moves. This collective responsibility nonsense is exactly that.

*except for grannies obvs. Mugging grannies = lulz.

Black Americans are still largely an out group there. Every comment section from there with any hint of colour divide quickly distills to eugenics.

You know and I know it aint right. But it happens. You know what else happens? Unarmed black children still get shot to death by their Police servi...FORCE. Sadly many of the low lives have surfaced and again looted their own fucking town. Do you want to tell Michael's mother that collective responsibility is someone else's problem? How about those that turned up for peaceful protest, how do you think their lives will be affected by their skin and postal code association?

For anyone to pretend that the small number of young black youth that violently mugged people during my teens didn't affect me in any way at all is at best disingenuous and at worst wilfully fucking stupid. It happens. It aint right. The day we become the in group is the day when all of this dissipates. I just feel for those up against the resistance of the mass whom fight tooth and nail to resist their joining of the in group.

So what you're saying is that once everyone cycles I can RLJ and it wont be my fault when someone gets punishment passed?

Finally....someone gets it.

Wut?

for whom?!

For all

Multigrooves - I don't really understand what the point you are trying to make is.

Yes, people are going to see an out group doing something bad and some of them are going to associate that everyone in that out group and ascribe collective responsibility to them.

Those people are bigots.

We shouldn't ever pander to bigots.

Do you want to tell Michael's mother that collective responsibility is someone else's problem?

I'm not sure what your point is here, but it kind of sounds like you're saying that some of the responsibility for the death of Michael Brown lies somewhere other than in the hands of the racist police who shot him. Like maybe if some sections of the black community weren't "low lives" then those police wouldn't have had reason to be racist and randomly shoot an innocent black guy. If that is your point, then we are never going to see eye to eye.

Also, whilst we're bandying around accusations of utopian thinking, if you really believe that in the unlikely scenario that tomorrow morning every cyclist hits the street and never breaks another law or contravenes a section of the highway code again, if you believe that scenario would have some massive impact on the amount of shit cyclists get from motorists then you are Thomas More AICMFP.

Motorists who hate us don't hate us because some of us skip red lights. That's just an after the fact rationalisation they come up with to justify their irrational bullshit. If we all obeyed the law, they'd hate us for not paying road tax, or because we wear lycra or because we're on roads they perceive as belonging to them, slowing them down and making them uncomfortably aware of how lethal their normally reassuring car can be.

It is a sad fact of life that some people steal bicycles.
Those people are bike thieves.

In those circumstances, is it pandering to bike thieves if I lock up a bike I've borrowed from a friend? Am I entitled to leave it unlocked on the basis that if it gets stolen it's not my fault, but the fault of the bike thief, and I'm not responsible for their actions because their actions are morally reprehensible?

Or am I responsible for the consequences of my action or inaction, because I should take account of the reality of the situation (i.e. that some people are bike thieves) even though I don't condone or approve of their actions?

Motorists who hate us don't hate us because some of us skip red lights. That's just an after the fact rationalisation they come up with to justify their irrational bullshit. If we all obeyed the law, they'd hate us for not paying road tax, or because we wear lycra or because we're on roads they perceive as belonging to them, slowing them down and making them uncomfortably aware of how lethal their normally reassuring car can be.

Cyclist-hating motorists. They're all bastards, aren't they. Making sweeping generalisations about cyclists.

Note that I said 'Motorists who hate us' not 'Motorists'.

And yeah, if you've decided to hate an entire group of people for some spurious reason, then yes, I'm afraid that does make you a bit of a bastard.

Hold up - the current bout of hand wringing is about inferring vicarious responsibility for another's actions against a third party at a later time.

i.e. By (running a red light / slapping a bonnet / wearing lycra / being in primary) now, you are responsible for the aggrieved driver running over a cyclist later on.

By saying that to Dan, you're reponsible now if he says something nasty to Idiot causing him to kick his dog. You bastard.

I did just kick my dog.

fair enough really - that dog doesn't pay road tax.

I appreciate what the current debate concerns, but was trying (without the mud-slinging and ad hominem attacks which this topic generally seems to descend into) to look at the underlying issue from a different perspective. Personally, I find it raises an interesting moral issue of the extent to which we are responsible for the effects our actions have on others, even though the agency by which those third parties are affected by our actions is itself morally reprehensible.

I suspect that nothing said on here will make anyone change their point of view, given the levels of entrenchment already apparent, but to my mind the issue is an illustration of a wider philosophical issue about moral agency.

Dan, could you please clearly state what point it is exactly you are trying to make?

This obfuscation with crude analogy is confusing me.