Nuxx:MPG.25db00d5a21992a0989705@news.zen.co.uk

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!newsfeed.straub-nv.de!dedekind.zen.co.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!shaftesbury.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID:  From: Guy Cuthbertson  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: "Inconsiderate Motorist" = "Motorist Having It Too Easy" Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 05:20:46 -0000 Lines: 27 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit User-Agent: MicroPlanet-Gravity/2.9.14 X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 100208-2, 08/02/2010), Outbound message X-Antivirus-Status: Clean Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: be9eb3c8.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=M2\W1A^A5E>:o1:8MXjNT0nok4Z\ X-Complaints-To: abuse@zen.co.uk Bytes: 2597 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:835631

The car-haters like to talk about "inconsiderate motorists" when referring to exceeding inappropriate speed limits, parking on unnecessary yellow lines, etc. Yet the evidence suggests that as ever, the car-haters mean something other than what they're actually saying. What they mean when they refer to an "inconsiderate motorist" is a motorist who is daring to make things too easy for themselves in spite of the myriad anti-car measures around them.

It's not really about how inconsiderate the motorist is being at all. Car-haters will bang on about it being so, so inconsiderate to drive at 51mph in the middle of the night on an otherwise empty 50mph dual carriageway whose limit used to be, and still should be, NSL. Yet genuinely inconsiderate driving is never condemned by the car-haters: drivers who hog the middle/outside lane, hold up long lines of traffic, don't bother indicating, etc completely escape any criticism. Why? Because they're not benefitting themselves in any way (and also they're making normal motorists' lives a misery, which of course the car-haters like).

So when the car-haters talk about an "inconsiderate motorist", it's really nothing to do with how other road users are being affected: what they mean is a motorist who is daring to improve their own lot, thereby sticking two well-deserved fingers up at the ridiculous number of completely unwarranted anti-car measures that are constantly thrown at them. Can't have that: they should be obeying their masters at Whitehall and letting them control them. The "inconsiderate" so-and- sos.