Posts by Moz
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to linger,
those same children will have been brought up to consider cars more “normal” than bicycles, and to consider bicycle helmets a “normal” indicator of a perceived high risk associated with cycling
They're right, but the causal link is apparently non-intuitive - cycling to school is now significantly more dangerous than it was for two main reasons:
* hardly any kids do it, so no-one looks for them
* the crush of cars outside schools and the time pressure leading to appalling driving makes school zones extremely dangerous to ride through, even for experienced adults.It's a tragedy of the commons as well: each single child is less likely to be killed by a motorist if they're driven to and from school, but the the crowd of such children makes all children less safe. Both immediately, as they travel from car to school, and long-term, as the fat morons (air pollution is worse inside cars and the particular pollution negatively affects intelligence, as does lack of exercise) make everyone else more likely to die as well (both through localised air pollution and by funding terrorists to prevent action to mitigate global warming. Did I say terrorists? I meant "the mass murdering sociopaths who own and operate oil and vehicle companies". My bad).
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to Kevin McCready,
"Those cyclists whose cause of death included a head injury were three times less likely to be wearing a helmet"
As you say, leaping on any slightly relevant fact to buttress an argument. That fact is not, as far as I know, in dispute. I mean, it's different in some overseas countries because the risk profile is different (people wear helmets because they're cycling dangerously), but that also doesn't contradict your point.
any link between helmet laws and cycling participation is correlation only
Will you at least concede the time ordering? First helmets are made mandatory, then later cycling numbers drop? If you dispute that I'd really like to see some numbers, because the ones I can find suggest the time ordering. Contrary to your claim, though, it seems fairly widely accepted that that relationship is causal (wikipedia summary) and of course the media have no problem reporting that.
I'm also curious about your contra-case rationale - why would a drop in cycling numbers cause the imposition of helmet laws? I suppose if there was a rash of cyclists being killed we could have a "something must be done, this is something" fallacy committed but that doesn't seem to be supported by the evidence. Especially in NZ, where the fallacy was followed by the drop rather than the other way round.
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Hard News: What the wastewater tells us…, in reply to Alfie,
What's the cost of tying up thirty cops for two weeks, plus helicopters? I bet it far exceeds the retail value of 1,300 plants.
Unlike some other confiscated goods, police don't actually sell the cannabis they find on those expeditions. So any cost-benefit analysis based on what undercover cops pay for weed is completely irrelevant. Although... maybe they should?
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to Carol Stewart,
It's interesting that it's now become commonplace for skiers and snowboarders to wear helmets, without any element of compulsion.
Yes, but they're sports. If you visit cycle-friendly countries the great majority of cyclists don't dress up for the ride or even sweat, so the comparison only works for the "sport cyclists" or in Russell's case, MAMILs (middle aged men in lycra) I kid, I kid :D
There is a lot of research on cycling, and one of the things that's been mentioned here before is the four types of cyclists. When cycling is difficult and dangerous, you mostly get the hard-core "ride or die" types for whom helmets are both a good idea and fairly widely used. But as you get more cyclists, and more cycle facilities, you move along that spectrum until eventually you get little old ladies writing letters to the council about lack of bicycle parking at the old folks home. For her 7.5kg full carbon granny bike, of course.
I'm in the "ride or die" group, but one thing I do is respond to council requests for feedback on proposed bike plans, and give unsolicited feedback when I feel the need. It works surprisingly well in many cases, because councils generally figure that if one person is motivated to ask for something obviously useful, probably 100 people want it. We have pram ramps at the top of our street now because of that :) I expect that later this year we will get them at the entrance to a nearby park, with planter beds or something to stop people parking over them... council person rang me to ask for clarification and mostly to explain that it would take a few months because they have to do actual engineering. Sending a truck round to re-lay bits of footpath is easy, though.
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to william blake,
Power commuting cyclists giving a little ping on their bell blasting through pedestrians and animals are just as arrogant as the one tonne metal sledgehammers.
So if we ring our bell to say we're there, we're arrogantly "blasting through", but if we don't ping we're likely to scare the sh!t out of people or have them stagger into us. Hmm.
My approach is to ring my bell so people know I'm coming. If they don't like that they need to tell me, and I'll try to remember them in future. But I've never been yelled at for ringing, only for not ringing. Or in one case, not ringing loud enough to be heard through the earbuds.
I ride quite a lot of shared path and off-road bike path on my daily commute, and it's an interesting balance. On the one hand, it would obviously be better for the 10-odd pedestrians I see on the average morning if I rode the whole 10km at less than 10kph, so they'd have more time to react to me. Especially useful for the people who appear to be drunk even at 0630 every day.
But on the other hand, that's just ridiculous. There just aren't that many pedestrians, and it's a shared path. This is not "cyclists are permitted if they're nice", this is "vastly improved and made contiguous as part of the cycleway network". Even the motor traffic engineers allow for cyclists to travel faster than 10kph, sometimes even double that.
Not to mention the stupidity that happens where they actually do have 10kph speed limits, like Pyrmont Bridge in Sydney. A lot of people run or skateboard over that bridge going faster than 10kph, but the cops who are sent out to enforce the speed limit are strangely reluctant to ticket the joggers. I think they know just how they would look in court. The state government, though, is very keen to send the cops in as part of their vigorous anti-cycling program.
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to Sam M,
it is the rule rather than the exception that the front car will stop inside the green cycle box at intersections
I had the amusement the other day of a cop car being stopped at the lights when I pulled up in the next lane. Passenger side cop says while I'm still moving "you going to stop for the red light?" (you can tell I was barely moving, he got that whole sentence out while I was still in earshot). My offence? Stopping with my front wheel over the white line. My second offence: asking what his driver said when he made the same remark to them. Passenger in the back seat, also a cop, saw the funny side and shut him down. Cops here are the most flagrant scofflaws of the lot, complaining is pointless but they're also very ready to dismiss any complaint by a cyclist about anything.
Also, it's no skin of the motorists nose if you fall off your bike and slide off the road or under their car after they overtake and pull in or hit the brakes. What are you gunna do - scratch the paint a little bit?
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Up Front: For Your Own Safety, in reply to Bart Janssen,
urinating is hard
We should have a pissing contest.
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Hard News: Superannuation: Back to the Future, in reply to Katharine Moody,
Land value tax
Is simply a partial asset or wealth tax. Why should land be special?
Specifically, why should Bill Gates pay zero tax on $60B of Microsoft shares while I pay extra tax on the unimproved value of the land my house sits on to compensate? Why should a farmer be forced to sell his land at a huge loss during a drought to pay the land tax which is assessed on the much more stable (and therefore higher) unimproved value? Also, I will argue forcefully that "unimproved value" is a bullshit term - why does the council building a road or sewer pipe next to my land change the "unimproved" value? But if it doesn't I'll be taxed on less than a hectare at the same rate per hectare as a farmer on marginal land needing 1000 hectares to raise 5 head of cattle.
There are a great number of arguments of that form to be made.
Wealth taxes are a good idea, but they're not a substitute for income taxes, they need to be part of a whole mix of different taxes if we're to have an effective taxation system.
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Up Front: For Your Own Safety, in reply to ,
what should a man do when three year old daughter needs to use the toilet
My limited experience with children is that most of them completely understand "pick a toilet, and I'll come in with you if you want me to". Very few children are willing to argue at any length in that situation :) It's a few special adults that boggle a bit. Also, once you have the cubical door shut it takes a very bold gender police to force it open so they can explain their problems to you.
In my experience, following the gender police back to the shop they work in and changing the baby there works. In several different ways at the same time.
We have a large and increasing number of non-gendered public toilets. And multilingual signs that say "parent and children change room" or some other description. Which seem to be used occasionally even by Muslim men with children as well, to my pleasant surprise (I live in an area with a lot of Muslims and it's rare to see one doing that level of hands-on childcare).
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Hard News: Superannuation: Back to the Future, in reply to linger,
I am paying NZ tax, at the residential rate, on my NZ income.
Good on you.
And Jeremy etc: I agree with you. I was arguing *against* Stephen R's claim that retirees are somehow special and shouldn't be taxed. I tried to make that clear. Sorry.