Posts by JackElder
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Phil 101.... Happily never took it again.
Disclaimer: I tutored both PHIL 101 and PHIL 106 at Vic in the late 90s. Then I realised that the career opportunities for a professional ethicist are extremely limited. Much less a professional meta-ethicist.
If you're now wondering if you took one of my classes: I'm the one with the beard, if that helps.
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It is a road built for an earlier time, and cyclists have never been a real consideration in any upgrade.
Too true for too many roads in our country. This isn't just a cyclist problem: how many of our rural roads were designed with an 80kph maximum speed in mind?
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Plus, Islander, at least cycle-tourists normally take the time to find adequate toilet facilities. One over freedom campers you've got to admit.
The whole "they don't pay road tax" thing is a wash. No-one pays road tax: you pay rates, or national taxes, which subsidise local/national roads respectively. Touring cyclists pay GST while they're here: they're contributing to our roads. And John Key obviously thinks touring cycling is the way forward: witness all our funding for that national cycleway.
Other perk of cycling: it's a good excuse to wear skin-tight lycra. It's more fun than you think!
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They are on something that is extremely underengineered, low powered, has very little braking power, no ability to protect them in an accident whatsoever, wobbles from side to side, extremely slim profile lowering their visibility, requires no license to drive, and yet can actually go quite fast for all that. Furthermore, the rider is usually quite distracted because they are also concentrating on powering the bike, they are often tired, and they're thinking about the end of the ride. It is no surprise that cyclists are often injured. If they can put themselves in drivers shoes then they will be a lot safer.
I've got to ask here: when were you last on a bike? The modern bicycle is arguably overengineered, hence the current trend for "back to basics" bikes such as fixies. There's certainly a damn sight more engineering in a $5k carbon fibre race bike than there is in most cheap cars. Ditto braking power; my mountain bike is sufficiently well-braked that I've sent myself over the bars doing panic stops from 60kph. Slim profile? I'm higher on a bike than I am in the car, I'll say that! As to wobbling, that's down to the rider. Your speculation about the rider's psychology is a bit odd: yes, we may be distracted - so might the driver. So?
All that said: I've been hit by cars precisely twice while cycling. I've been an avid cyclist for over a decade. The worst car-related injuries I've suffered have been from being hit by a car as a pedestrian (where the driver ran a red light and plowed through 30-odd people on a crossing - three of us were hit) and as a driver (when we were rear-ended at some speed). Cycling is way, way safer than people imagine.
Which is part of the very reason the vision improves - it has to.
I think this does happen for good drivers. I don't think it happens as a matter of course. This seems to have some empirical support: for example, the UK driving test includes a "hazard perception" section where they test you on your ability to spot possible upcoming hazards, such as people stepping out into the road, cars pulling out of driveways, etc. You can fail your driving test by not spotting hazards. That implies to me that they're aware that this is a separate skill, and that they're requiring people to learn it rather than just assuming you get it in the package once you've been driving for a bit.
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This is the kind of thing non-drivers would think. Without directly experiencing driving, the error in that is probably not apparent.
Ben - you might have missed it earlier, but I've been driving for some years now. I just cycle as well. I don't think there's any error in what I've said.
I actually agree with you that it's helpful to get an idea of how other road users see the road, as different modes of transport mean you watch out for different things. For example, if it's slightly wet, cyclists and motorcyclists are going to be watching out for manhole covers, to avoid the danger of skids on wet metal.
This is another reason to learn to cycle, so that you can see the road the way cyclists do, for everyone's safety. ;)
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Now, I almost guarentee JackElder, you werent overtaking aforesaid drivers?
Nope. I'm normally hit by drivers pulling out of driveways, who've usually looked both ways but somehow failed to register the bloke in a fluorescent top. Like I say, I think people generally look for a particular pattern, which is generally "other cars" - motorcyclists I know often report the same "looked but didn't see" phenomenon.
Finally how does Ben get away with talking about cars and bikes being sensual and all that without a second look? Has he got a badge I don't have yet?
Because it'd be like shooting fish in a barrel.
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apparently the vision of drivers improves dramatically, particularly peripheral vision.
This explains why every time I've been hit by a car (both on foot and on a bike), the first thing the driver's said to me was "Sorry, I didn't see you." Personally, I think that drivers are great at watching out for specific objects - viz car-sized objects travelling around the speed limit and near the centre line. Other objects, not so much.
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There's clearly a bit of a theme here: while I'd half-arsedly thought "I need to learn to drive at some point", and had resolved to do so before I turned 30, impregnating my wife threw the issue into sharp relief. It was quite handy: my driving instructor got rather into it, and spent a lot of time planning routes to the hospital from our house. "This is how you want to go if it's during the morning rush hour; obviously, if it's the middle of the night, it'll be quicker to zip down the A11", that sort of thing. In between ogling young ladies: "Oooh would you look at her... NO KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD YOU IDIOT!!" sort of thing.
My wife cycled to work all through her first pregnancy. She had terrible morning sickness, and it was much easier to suddenly stop and vomit when you're on a bike. She's a tough woman, my wife.
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No drivers' license I can understand, but no passport? Blimey. Personally, I learned to drive at age 28, but had the convenience of living in a variety of places that were designed around walking/cycling (Wellington, Tokyo, Cambridge, etc). Chapeau for living as a non-driver in Christchurch.
Machine Empathy: Paranoia, right?
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I think the real issue has been elided here. In the discussion between Movie A and Movie B, is Movie B in fact... a B-movie?
The Back to Mine series of DJ mixes- basically a series of mixes of the sort of music you were likely to hear if *Famous Name DJ* took you back to their place for a drunken after party - threw up a few interesting entries. This was notable on Underworld's disk: they chose to kick off a 70-minute DJ mix of music they loved with the full 12-minute majesty of this epic. On the simple basis that it had showed them that music doesn't need to be a 3-minute pop song; that you could take your time, could develop a theme, could say something important. Everyone has one song that they'd hold people down and make them listen to: this is mine.