Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Crash stats don't tell you who's more obnoxious, they just tell you who's driving beyond their capability.
Crashing into people is at the upper end of the obnoxious scale, IMHO.
I just said they have bad driving habits because they largely learned from their family and friends and the level of testing they underwent in order to get their licence was minimal so the bad habits could be suppressed for long enough to satisfy an instructor.
And you completely failed to acknowledge experience as the slightest factor in driver ability.
I was singling out all drivers who haven't come through the latest round of changes.
Yes, most of the driving population. You're implying there's some kind of massive step change in the overall quality of their driving compared to the rank newbies who are cranking out of the testing regime now. Do you have any evidence of this? I understand the argument, I counter that experience is also a factor, and where are we? Left with the accident stats, which are massively against the majority of people who have but recently gained their licenses.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Matthew Poole,
A driver’s licence is proof that the state has given you permission to use a motor vehicle in the exercise of your right to freedom of movement.
Meh. I don't buy that I have a right to freedom of movement in the first place, from which other kinds of movement derive. I don't see the need for such quibbling. The driver's license is quite specifically an expression and a proof of my right to drive certain kinds of vehicle lawfully on public roads. That's what it amounts to practically, it's how it's used. It does not override other laws, it simply means that no one can legally prevent me from driving if they don't have some other reason to detain me.
In fact, it's quite possible to have the right to drive without having freedom of movement. You can have a driver's license whilst in a prison cell. I met a fellow recently who owns the gym down the end of my street, who wears an ankle bracelet that triggers an alert if he is not either at his home or his place of work, or on the road between those two. His freedom of movement is severely curtailed, but his right to drive is not.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Matthew Poole,
When they indicate poorly, tailgate, and generally drive in a manner that shows a disdain for the law and their other road users, why should I cut them slack just because they've got more time behind the wheel?
Do you have the slightest evidence that these behaviors are more prevalent in older people? My own experience is that the opposite holds, that the most impatient and annoying drivers on the planet are young people, and crash statistics bear that out, as do insurance premiums, despite all the righteous law changes.
It wasn't a matter of cutting slack. You actually went out of your way to say that older drivers are crap, on a theoretical argument based on changes in driver training and testing. It's not the case, until their faculties start failing, and indeed their greater level of experience may well have masked even that for many years. More training is an excellent idea, but mostly because it will stop young people needing to have crashes to learn the extent of their mortality. Even then, it's only so effective.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Keir Leslie,
There's probably not a right to drive a car
Lets get into the ontology of it! Wicked! While that's getting sorted out (this may take a few hundred years), my driver's license stands in place of my right to drive. Barring any other excuse to stop me, a police officer can't prevent me from going about my lawful business in a car on the grounds that it hasn't been proven to be a right, which exists. I'm certainly not going to let the philosophy hold me up any more than it already has in my life.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Matthew Poole,
It's worth noting that, like most activities, one of the things that makes you better at driving is doing more and more of it. So ragging out anyone older than 30 on account of the poor standard of their training is a wee bit one-sided. They're likely to have spent tens of thousands more hours at the wheel than you. Contrary to popular belief, most people aren't asleep at the wheel, and they continue to learn and refine their skills for a long time. They also tend to become more risk averse over time.
The increase in accident rates for the elderly is on account of declining powers, rather than poor training.
Which is not to say that more training is a bad idea. I wholeheartedly approve of the idea. But I doubt that it will be the panacea that you seem to think, if you even do think that, rather than just having a spleen-vent on older drivers for their outrageous cheek at being born further in the past.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Moz,
I took a trip to get some milk last night, no hi-viz or helmet in this case, the shop is only 100m down the road. It was shut. I went a little further on to the next shop, also closed. Realized the next one was 2km down the road, but didn't really feel inclined to add 600m to that by going home to get my vest and helmet, so I just rode it. It was a servo, and a car that had passed me was filling up. The guy looked at me smilingly and said "Nice night for a ride!". I decided to ask if he had seen me, despite not wearing hi-viz. He laughed and said, "Yes, from about a kilometer away. Well, I saw your light anyway". Flashing red, FTW.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Moz,
where if I take the lane I'm grinding uphill with angry motorists behind me, and if I don't I'm squeezed viciously against the curb or parked cars because the road is not quite wide enough for a bike and a car.
If that's the situation, I'll very often consider taking the footpath. Going uphill slowly, the chances of an accident with cars or pedestrians is much less.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to JackElder,
Also thought I should note that having gravity on your side works well in your situation, since I presume you have a much harder time limit at the start of the day than the end, and being less sweaty in the morning is better? Unfortunately for Aucklanders, the reverse is true on this in most cases, since Auckland is a town on a steep hill, surrounded by steep hills. So most likely they will have gravity on their side on the way home, unless they live above the altitude of K-Road.
ETA: Aucklanders who work in the city, and live in the suburbs, that is. But that, for reasons given before is probably the main kind of bicycle commuter - parking doesn't cost much in suburbs, and the tyranny of rush hour is less. Unless you work in a suburb on the opposite side of the city from where you live, in which case that's a very big cycle commute.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to JackElder,
As the distance gets longer, the math starts to get dodgier; but in rush hour traffic, for anything up to around 10k, the bike's a clear winner in my view.
Yes, I'm not commuting during rush hour, and I live next to a motorway, so the car is a clear winner in terms of speed - 10 mins is my usual time to get door to door. But the parking is unacceptably expensive to me, and the petrol costs too. I would do this only on a day I had only one lecture, and didn't want to stay to use the labs. That does end up feeling extremely luxurious. I can also park-and-bus, will often do this if it's pouring with rain, or I'm not feeling well. It's an improvement on bus alone, cuts off 15 or so minutes and costs the same.
The parking cost may be insignificant to quite a few people, particularly if they work in a suburban location. For them, it swings more sharply in favour of car, and more sharply away from bus, in proportion to how far they live from their work.
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Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Russell Brown,
And very, very few people cycle-commute 20km daily. Most actual NZ cycle commutes are a fraction of that, if only because riding 10km on city streets at commuter hour takes a fair bit of time.
Yup, time is my greatest barrier. My commute to university is 11km from home each way. My average time is 30 mins on-road, plus 7 mins bike-related-stuffing-around, each way, making it 74 mins per day on average. I've done it in as little as 21 with a strong tailwind, going hammers. But even going hard out, it's taken me as long as 40 mins with a strong headwind. Given that I drop off and pick up kids, I've got hard limits at each end of the day, so I've got to give myself 45 mins each side as a safety margin, which means my commute costs 90 mins if I go the whole way on the bike. That's a big slice to eat out of a 6 hour day, when only 60 mins of it is healthy exercise.
If, however, I park and ride, it becomes much less malicious. The route is 4km each way, so about 15 mins with safety margin, and the stuffing around drops to around 2 minutes, since I don't have to get changed. Then it's the van (with bike inside), which takes about 10 each way, cutting total time down to 52 mins. The 38 mins saved every day gives me three more hours every week to study, and I'm still getting a nice 20-30 mins of hard exercise each day, at little cost (parking is free, petrol cost around $2.50, similar to bus).
At that kind of distance, the bicycle as a commuter solution really comes into its own. It's easy enough that nearly anyone can manage it, regardless of physical fitness. It's a big cost saver over using a car to drive the entire way (since parking costs heaps), and it's a time and cost saver over using a bus. The exercise is not huge, but if you're prone to not doing any at all, it's a massive improvement.
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