MJuric wrote:
My point was more that this type of danger tends to get overblown as 'a menace to society' type issue.
I'm really not sure how else to put it. If you're tooling around town disobeying the road laws, causing others to react to you and disrupting traffic, you're a menace to society. The fact that it's "Not that big of a menace" and "Most of the danger is placed on the person being the menace", doesn't really change anything. IF one biker purposefully flies thru a stop light and makes one drive slam on their brakes they are being a menace to society. You may think it's no big deal or not that big of a menace and that may or may not be true, but they are definitely a menace and people see them that way.
The primary danger is to the cyclist himself, not the car owner, and the perception of the safety posed by the cyclist is vastly overblown compared to the real danger posed by the cyclist.
Putting yourself in danger makes you stupid, putting others in danger, purposefully, no matter how little, makes you a menace.
I'd take a red light running, traffic darting cyclist over a drunk or distracted/texting driver any day of the week. At least the cyclist isn't surrounded by 2 tons of vehicle.
We put drunk drivers in jail for being repeat offenders and nearly all of society looks down with scorn at drunk drivers. To the contrary there's a decent portion of cyclists that not only accept a red light running, traffic darting cyclist, but many see no problem with it and think they should have the right to do so. You see the problem with that don't you? How many cyclist do you know that go on a ride and you know before you start they will run lights, dart in traffic and ignore a plethora of road laws? How many drivers do you know that you know in advance will be driving drunk later?
It's really simple, obey the law and don't be a douche nozzle and drivers of those 2 ton vehicles are less likely to see you as a pain in the ass that shouldn't be on the road.
~Matt
I wholeheartedly agree on the "don't break the law" and others won't view you negatively part. No matter the starting point, the aim is to scale down conflict. And obviously makes sense on personal safety issue. (I'd like to keep riding, therefore don't blow through a red or otherwise put myself in danger)
My bringing up drunk/distracted drivers was to compare the relative safety (menace, if you will) of the two extreme examples. Perhaps it was a bad example. My point was argue that even at their worst - cyclists are still less of a menace than the equivalent car douche nozzle, if for only other reason that there's a 2 ton automobile involved. Even the safest of us cyclists run stop signs when no one is around, etc. but on the more benign examples we can compare this to a slightly speeding or a rolling stop - car drivers know they will break the law too when they get in a car, too.
My point was that because we're so car-centric a society, we tend to underestimate the dangers of the established norm. Many of us have a fear of flying, yet its the drive on the way to the airport which is more likely to kill us. By the same token, we focus on the cyclist breaking traffic laws and causing people to slam on their brakes, than we do the granny who shouldn't really be driving. Yes, there's an intent to break the law (I'm not minimizing this) - but there's also the raw risk that driving itself poses which we tend to forget. We don't worry about the small chance of killing someone when we step behind the wheel, but it's the guy in spandex we worry about running around terrorizing everyone.
ETA: I'm not trying to say that the douche nozzle cyclist isn't a menace, just that like a lot of things, the menace part is overblown relative to its true danger. The result are drivers saying that they'll run over (otherwise innocent) cyclists because of a fairly practical 3 ft law.
