Posts by Stephen Judd
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Holy crap. One of the people featured in the introductory clips was moving in the same circles as me some years ago. Their odd behaviour was cause for comment and disquiet, but without the "explanation" that the autism label provides no particular tolerance was extended. I wonder now whether that person would be been better accepted had we known. I certainly had barely heard the word then, nor had any conception what it might mean apart from signifying small children rocking back and forth.
-
in reality if the lord came through with horses, you got the hell out of the way, or got barrelled. Helps when the lord often owns the road you're walking on (despite the fact that you might have built it)
Kyle, no time to dig up appropriate quotes right now, but a) there's case law on this very issue, which is why I mentioned it and b) at the time, it was the King's highway.
-
Ben, I agree with you about how neat cars are. My car gives me that same amenity and I love it too.
Also, note that when I complain about the rights of vulnerable vs the dangerous, and ask who's rude, I know perfectly well what most people think. I'm proposing alternatives, that's all.
But anyway, there's more to the role of cars in society than the private benefits any car provides for its owner.
Eg, you mention the 3 hours of madness in Auckland, and suggest "for all those people that simply must, for some reason, work in the city, how hard would it really be for them to just consider moving there?"
An interesting feature of this idea is that it would presumably greatly reduce the amount of car traffic. The idea of few, highly enjoyable trips is a nice one. I don't want to ban cars or anything like that. I just want to think about whether we can set things up to reduce the sort of tragedy of the commons they seem to bring about.
The answer to the question "how hard?", as things are, might be pretty hard indeed. The city has long grown, by accident and design, on the assumption that cars are the predominant mode of transport, and that people will live a long way from where they work. Apartments suitable for families don't exist in any number in Auckland, neither are there amenities for children at the right density, yadda yadda -- implementing your vision of most people working at home or living close to their workplace would require exactly the kind of radical rethinking I like.
In sum, I think we have a lot to agree on.
Oh Emma: congrats on the house! I will try to get out and raise a glass to it this evening.
-
I think you need to give a bit of weight (in your monster post, and we will hold you to that promise!) to the different ways in which cars and other motor vehicles are used in the 21st century, c/f 100 years earlier.
Deborah: absolutely. I am not proposing a McGillicuddy-style Great Leap Backwards. Although full unemployment for all has a certain appeal.
But yes, it has been 100 years -- cars are no longer obviously the progressive form of the future, they are just as much a potentially obsolete transport mode as cycles, buses, trams, trains, diesel ships and planes. To envision a reduced role for the motorcar and a reclamation of the public street can be forward-looking at least as much as it is nostalgic.
-
Islander: I'm aware of your specific beef with tourists on bikes, and I don't particularly disagree that directly, tourist on bikes don't contribute directly much to the roads they use.
But how many of them are there? What extra costs do they incur that others have to bear?
I mean, in my role as cyclist, I contribute bugger-all to the roads of Wellington -- on the other hand, I cause negligible wear and receive very little by way of special accommodation. I could be cluttering the place up with my car and its redundant three empty seats and boot, but I graciously choose not to, and all I ask is a reasonable margin when people pass and the same attention they give to other kinds of vehicle.
And to the extent that cycle tourists, like other tourists, spend lots of money while they're here, what if in making things safer for road-tripping cyclists we got a whole lot more of them?
I'm prepared to believe that from the perspective of a resident of Big O, a subset of cyclists don't have anything to offer but annoyance. But there is a bigger picture. Also, as a tongue-in-cheek militant cyclist, I just like to challenge the assumption that cars deserve the special treatment they get.
-
Apropos the defensive driving skills imparted by cycling -- it's sad that we have to develop them, isn't it? In a better managed environment, they would be unnecessary.
I am hoarding links for a monster blog post on this subject, but in the meanwhile...
Many people think that faster, larger vehicles are entitled to go as fast as they are capable, and that other smaller, slower users need to yield to them. If you hold up a car, that's rude. If you step in front of one by mistake, and the car couldn't stop in time, it's your fault.
Well, up until the 20th century, it was not. Custom (and English common law) dictated that fast and large road users had to defer to smaller, slower ones. If the fast and large hurt the slow and small, the former were at fault. If you were walking in the middle of a lane and milord's coach bowled you into the ditch, he was at fault, and you were exercising your rights.
If you look at a street scene from the 19th century, it is notable how many of the occupants are not in fact going anywhere. They are conversing, playing, conducting business, buying and selling in the street, amid foot and horse traffic.
When cars were first introduced, people were naturally horrified at these dangerous devices hurtling selfishly. on the public road. It took years of campaigning, politicking, marketing and advertising by manufacturers and motorists to effectively privatise the road for (at that time) the minority who were well off enough to own a car. Other road users, from cyclists to kids playing football to organ grinders to barrow-pushing peddlers were literally marginalised.
A century later, our ideas of what is natural is entirely opposite. But it is just a sense. It is not pre-ordained by nature -- it is the result of sustained effort by a privileged class to entrench their privilege in the law and the culture.
Why shouldn't cars yield? Why is the slow light party considered rude and culpable, rather than the dangerously fast heavy one? Although I am a motorist as well as a cyclist and a pedestrian, I enjoy posing the opposite view. For me it is by no means obvious that things should be or have to be the way they are.
-
(and by "normal" I guess I mean "normative" rather than "usual").
-
Motorists in particular should acknowledge that they are putting others in danger by doing what they are doing, and that they have an extra special duty of care because of it. They are in something that is extremely underengineered, overly high powered, has very little braking power, no ability to protect others in an accident whatsoever, has extraordinary momentum relative to the usual cargo, extremely wide profile lowering their visibility, requires an inadequate license to drive, and yet can actually go quite fast for all that. Furthermore, the driver is usually quite distracted because they are also multitasking while operating the vehicle, they are often tired, and they're thinking about the end of the terrible traffic. It is no surprise that motorists often injure others. If they can put themselves in cyclist and pedestrians' shoes then they will be a lot safer for other road users.
Sorry to pick on you Ben, but I really have had enough of this idea that cars are the default, normal class of road users, and that others have to just suck it up. EVERYONE needs to be careful, the dangerous as much as the vulnerable.
-
I ventured into the pits of the Herald and Stuff's comments, and was surprised and pleased to find a bunch of complaints about this non-story beatup, and some more backing Chauvel for expressing what many people feel. I have a feeling that this is going to be an own goal for the right-wing noise machine.
-
was there ever a book of that ongoing, deeply strange, strip he had in the Listener? I loved that...
God yes that blew my teenaged mind. The one with the alien? Enjoy.
(I love the incredibly detailed renderings of the backgrounds).