Posts by Moz
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Hard News: Lowering the Stakes, in reply to Richard Stewart,
I understand the notion of 'owning' your space on the road, but
See the point above about "If you can't DRIVE safely and legally, don't drive".
Honestly, any time you find yourself wanting to say "yes but" is a good time to think very hard about what you're about to say. The cliche is "I'm not racist but". "I think cyclists should be allowed to obey the road rules but" is definitely in the same vein. And I think deserves the same caution.
Context is important. Following up a discussion of "cyclists often feel obliged to choose between their own safety and obeying the law" because "some annoyed motorists kill" with "even cyclists who obey the law annoy me" is hopefully not the impression you wanted to give of your feelings.
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Hard News: Lowering the Stakes, in reply to Russell Brown,
"If you can't ride safety and legally, don't ride."
"If you can't DRIVE safely and legally, don't drive" would be more germane.
If we applied that guideline there'd be a lot fewer private cars and a lot more publiuc transport.
Complete side issue: I found out recently that NZ rules have changed so that any infernal combustion engine makes your "bicycle" a moped - power assist on a bicycle has to be electric to be legal. A friend was looking at some US-made toy with a ~20cc engine which counts as a bicycle in the USA and I hunted up the rules. But that's a very positive development.
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Hard News: Lowering the Stakes, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Sure it could get a little silly for some people (looks at my friend with 3 different bikes now) but those people will be the minority.
You mean there are people who only own one bike? Man, that's real poverty. More seriously, most of the people I know who commute regularly own a spare bike, often their old bike from when they last upgraded. If only so they have a backup.Storage would be the main reason not to keep a spare.
Remember that when we're talking about bikes that a lot of new bikes sell for under $100, and second hand bikes can be found lying around free. Any regulation has to allow for this or be quite regressive in its effects. See the discussion about bicycle registration for more details. That discussion is quite relevant to most attempts to regulate bicycles, not least because it reminds us that bicycles are a benefit not a cost to society, which is much less obviously true for private motor vehicles.
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When you are on the roundabout, try to continue indicating right if you are able, or indicate occasionally while you ride around the roundabout – this will let drivers
... know exactly where you will fall off your bike.
I've tried this, but the combination of braking, turning and looking in all directions simultaneously is not compatible having one hand off the handlebars. Made worse because roundabouts are also prime locations for potholes. I indicate coming into the roundabout, but very rarely once I'm in it and never when I'm turning.
I can't recall the NZ situation, but in Australia multi-lane roundabouts are effectively off limits to cyclists since the rules say we must use the outside lane even if road markings suggest otherwise and give way to all traffic, especially traffic that would otherwise have to give way to us if we were motorised. So legally I am required to stop and give way to a motorist entering the roundabout, even (or especially?) if I'm being followed by a motorist who expects to have the right of way. Multi-lane roundabouts are confusing enough when everyone behaves in obvious ways, unexpectedly stopping is a recipe to get killed. The worst example I've seen is in Melbourne where there's a green-painted bike lane that goes half-way through then at the point where there's a complex merge it crosses two lanes of traffic. I can't imagine being able to use that path safely if there was any other traffic (and I never saw a cyclist use it despite 6-odd months of passing it twice a day). Haymarket Roundabout, the exit is where two of three lanes turn off to the left of frame and the middle lane can go left or straight, and the left lane is crossing tram tracks and a painted cycle lane. Motorists are *busy* doing that, not looking out for cyclists. FWIW most cyclists use the rightmost lane there if going north/up. Lane not visible in the shot, hopefully it's been removed.
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Hard News: Lowering the Stakes, in reply to winston moreton,
Footpaths will not suit the serious riders!
Cycle path designers have to work quite hard on this one. The speed range is greater than most roads have to deal with, from recreational cyclists with kids doing 5-10kph through to serious cyclists* doing 60-70kph.
Commuting cyclists really feel any breaks in the bike route, especially where the break is because things got difficult for the engineers. The unpleasant reality is that the bike path is often only present where it's not really needed, and disappears where it's essential.
BikeSaint in Sydney now works for the council as a bicycle planner, and her main point is that the very obvious separated paths work to attract cyclists and get them riding regularly. Once they do, they often stop using the segregated paths because even the best paths have major issues if you want to stay at 25kph or more. But defending the presence of those paths is essential in order to keep recruiting cyclists. Wouldn't it be nice if Auckland could get to the point where the argument is "most cyclists just use the road not the path, therefore we can remove the path"?
* "serious" meaning they're doing it for fun :)
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Hard News: Lowering the Stakes, in reply to winston moreton,
Putting bikes on the footpath is a no brainer. But it means safe cycling. The law could be strict liability "If a bike hits a pedestrian then it was not safe."
Effectively that's the case now, since the cyclist is in the wrong by virtue of not being allowed to ride there in the first place.
Some European countries do this, but always extend it to other road users to become "the bigger vehicle is liable". In countries where this is the case they also build the rest of the system around this idea. I'm not sure which comes first, though. But only doing this to cyclists, rather than also for cyclists, would just become another disincentive for riding like helmet laws. Which costs lives rather than saving them.
I long ago gave up riding defensively and ride assertively instead. Standard rule for any kind of power imbalance relationship is that if you cringe they will hit you.
Assertively means, for example, that since I cross a barely-wide-enough bridge every day, not taking the lane means more dangerous overtaking by motorists. If I ride a metre from the kerb most of them follow me rather than cross the double lines to overtake.
My joy at the moment is working near one end of one of Sydney's longer continuous bike routes and living half way down it. So I ride 15km of off road shared path then 5km of back streets. It is so good,especially compared to my last job where I rode into and then through the CBD. For a while I rode to work in Wellington (Newtown to CBD) and that was one reason I left, that ride was just atrocious (and getting banned from ringing the "broken traffic light" line because I rang too often about lights that were working as designed (ie, not triggering for bicycles) was the icing on the cake).
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Speaker: TPP: Nearing Endgame, in reply to Matthew Poole,
You mean, much in keeping with the current situation, then?
More so. It's all about incrementally boiling the frog. The game is "just how much can we take before they revolt". And the answer seems to be that our parliament is not revolting.
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Speaker: TPP: Nearing Endgame, in reply to Matthew Poole,
"from what I understand the TPP is largely similar to the Oz FTA"
IOW, Australia is taking the position "We got fucked, so now we're going to try and make sure you get fucked too."Actually, Australia stands to get even more fucked by the TPP, there are a few places where the Aus agreement does not go as far as the FTA. Grey imports are legal in Oz, for example, as is unlocking and region-free playback. The maximalists are obviously unhappy about this, as are (eg) local cellphone outlets who have to compete with HK online outlets.
And remember that Oz and NZ negotiate together on a lot of pharmaceutical purchases, and that's another hot topic with the corporations who are driving the TPP.
This is not actually about the US vs everyone else, it's a treaty negotiatated by nations on behalf of international corporations, it's just that the US is the most egregiously corporate state. But US-the-country will get screwed by the treay just as surely as everyone else, but the marginal increase will be smaller because they're already very screwed. It's US-the-corporate-haven that stands to win big if the treaty is signed.
Just look at the "corporate right to sue nations" stuff and ask yourself how this could possibly be in the interested of the US-the-nation. The only way to "win" there is to make, and keep, your laws so corporate-friendly that there's no possible grounds for a court case. "win".
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I'm going to chime in at the bottom because yes, I have read all the comments. I've even read and thought about Graeme's original 3500 word essay stating very clearly that the rights of the already privileged must be jealously guarded, lest the rights of the oppressed be at risk of further diminishment. And I agree. Free speech must be guarded. But there's a balance, and some speech is (much) more important than other speech. The speech that is a report of a rape is more important than the speech which is a defence of rapists.
So my answer to Graeme is: no. You are on the wrong side of this one. We can, and should, actively try to reduce the power and frequency of pro-rape speech. I believe we have an active obligation to do so. I am sorry that you disagree, and respect you significantly less because of your position.
For the privileged there is never a good time to challenge privilege.
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Up Front: To the Letter, in reply to Emma Hart,
I'm a bit at the other end of the scale - I think there's private stuff that I will destroy so no-one else reads, and stuff that can be published. Either once I'm dead, or when I get round to it. There's a lot of value in reading ancestral tales, IMO.
Someone published a book of war stories a few years ago that included excerpts from my maternal grandfather's letters to his wife. I have photos of the relevant pages, and will OCR them at some point. IIRC when she went through her stock of letters looking for publishable parts my grandmother carefully destroyed a number of them, and parts of others. Having a scanner meant she could give decent hi-res images to the book's author, and having me to advise meant that redactions were definitely redacted. The family have a collection of memorabilia but I suspect I will have to wait until the next generation die before I can get my hands on it and scan it. Some of it is in museums, and more of it probably will be in time. Hopefully the national library or someone similar has the letters my gran approved being made public.
I've also scanned my letters and diaries over the ears, because it's easier than carrying paper around. Books are a PITA to dispose of, they don't burn,shredding is hard and even wet you can't tear them up. But I'd rather know that my diaries are destroyed than hope for the best in landfill, you know.