Nuxx:2a3d59ba-8b66-43ff-9ee9-2b6465ca17de@8g2000hse.googlegroups.com

Path: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!8g2000hse.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID: <2a3d59ba-8b66-43ff-9ee9-2b6465ca17de@8g2000hse.googlegroups.com> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: Baby bear Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2008 09:58:32 -0700 (PDT) References:  Lines: 30 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.105.129.172 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1217696313 9650 127.0.0.1 (2 Aug 2008 16:58:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2008 16:58:33 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: 8g2000hse.googlegroups.com; posting-host=88.105.129.172; posting-account=7_6kYAkAAABD6HrjM0VxehwvZOKMxm4g User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Bytes: 2709 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:660368

On Aug 1, 10:00=A0am, lardyninja  wrote: > Not too hot, not too cold, not too wet, not too dry, not too sunny, not > too cloudy, not too windy. It's a beautiful summer Friday here in the > capital. On days like these I can't understand why the streets aren't > jammed with cyclists. Got to work with a big grin.

You may not understand it, but if other people want to drive, they have every right to. Just because the streets aren't jammed with cyclists, and there are people in cars who you personally think should be cycling (despite knowing nothing about their journeys), that's no reason to think badly of them, or (worse still) make things difficult for them.

Cyclists need to stop worrying about whether other people are cycling and why they're not cycling, and concentrate on enjoying their own journeys and being as courteous as possible to *all* other road users. "Encouraging more cycling" is mainly "discouraging driving" under another name, and if discouraging driving isn't anti-motorist, then what is?

If cyclists want motorists to be courteous to them, they have to get out of the mindset that the motorists somehow "shouldn't be there", with the general lack of polite behaviour that that leads to. The road is a place for getting from A to B as safely as possible, not a place for discriminating against people on the basis of their form of transport. If people feel the need to do that then they should do it off the road through the appropriate channels, rather than attempting to take direct action on the road.

Guy