Nuxx:Deb01001-e178-47b9-8e3c-57692dca956c@t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com

Path: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID:  From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: One for Nuxxman. Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2008 00:23:48 -0700 (PDT) References:  Lines: 61 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.105.217.66 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: posting.google.com 1212737028 20310 127.0.0.1 (6 Jun 2008 07:23:48 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2008 07:23:48 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com; posting-host=88.105.217.66; posting-account=7_6kYAkAAABD6HrjM0VxehwvZOKMxm4g User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008051206 Firefox/3.0,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Bytes: 4774 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:652085

On Jun 5, 5:53=A0pm, "Simon Mason"  wrote: > Here's yet another example of the war on the cyclist. Police yet again > targetting innocent cyclists who are doing nobody any harm at all. Can't > they catch real criminals, or is it all about making money from soft > targets?

Are you trying to be funny? Do you think road safety's a laughing matter? Think of the children.

It's quite simple. I want motorists to be prosecuted/penalised for things which are genuinely dangerous and/or socially irresponsible (because that is what the law is for). This (no matter how much the trolls like to pretend otherwise) does not include exceeding a speed limit in safety, parking on unnecessary double yellow lines, or driving in unnecessary bus lanes when there are no buses or cyclists to be seen. It does include driving without a licence/insurance/tax/ MOT, drink- and drug-driving, dangerous/illegal overtaking, lane- hogging, causing a huge queue and refusing to pull over and let it past, not indicating, pulling out in front of people, jumping red lights, driving inappropriately fast, and all sorts of other things (the vast majority of driving offences in fact). Do you understand yet, or shall I go over it in even simpler terms?

Equally, since unlike the trolls I don't discriminate between modes of transport, I want cyclists to be prosecuted/penalised for things which are genuinely dangerous and/or socially irresponsible (because that is what the law is for). This does not include cycling on the pavement when there is obviously no-one around, or jumping red lights on pedestrian crossings when there are clearly no pedestrians who will be affected. It does include cycling on the pavement if there are people around, jumping red lights the way that cyclists (IME) normally do, deliberately obstructing motor traffic, cycling three or more abreast, furious cycling, and pretty much anything else which is illegal on a bicycle.

All I want is for the same degree of discretion and common sense to apply to motorists and cyclists. The trolls, on the other hand, want discretion and common sense to be applied to cyclists, but want motorists to receive huge and disproportionate punishments for absolutely every technical infraction, no matter if anyone suffers. Their motivation is quite clearly the persecution of motorists for driving at all, rather than road safety. Further proof of this is the fact that the trolls even want motorists to be punished when they're accused of speeding despite not having actually been speeding; any motorist who dares to fight a speeding ticket in court, no matter how unjustified the ticket, is invariably subjected to high levels of abuse from the trolls. It's not about "safety", it's not about "justice", it's about punishing motorists for driving full stop. Not that any of the trolls will ever admit it, because lying about it seems to be part of the trolls' sick little game.

Now I really hope you've got that, Simon Mason. If you haven't, there's really no hope for you. But I think you know perfectly well what I mean, as you did when you started this topic, and trying to win an argument by pretending not to understand someone's position is pretty lame TBH. If you want to attempt to explain why cyclists shouldn't be punished for every little infraction, but motorists should, then go ahead. But just because you can't, that's no reason to keep trying to waste my time by pretending to be thick instead. It's really not as funny or clever as you seem to think.