"This is so dangerous!", laments the woman driving directly into a Critical Mass bike ride
This was a Critical Mass event, which is why the bicyclists are taking up all of the street as a way to reclaim the streets and protest the lack of safety for riders under usual conditions. It's not legal, but protests are never useful if they're fully legal now, are they.
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She definitely should have either stopped or gone a different route, but it is incredibly dangerous to cycle head onto incoming motor traffic. Not really a great look for the cyclists.
Better off staying in the correct lane but hogging it so vehicles had no choice but to stay behind.
I'm with you. I get this is a protest, but I don't protest gun violence against kids by parading them down a firing range. Taking up the whole road can result in you getting hurt, it doesn't matter what should be our what your ideals are. It's a road for cars and behaving like this increases the chance that someone gets hurt.
On top of that this does what every protest that interrupts traffic does, makes people dislike you and your cause.
It's functionally identical. The lane is occupied. Motorists cannot enter it, whether the cyclists are facing them or not.
It is not.
Cars follow the rules of traffic. This means you know basically what they will do. These people are just a mob. Look at how many of those bikes just cross solid lines. This is no where near the same. We can't make progress if we start acting irrationally.
Also, cars don't drive on the wrong side of the road into traffic and through red lights.
It's not functionally identical, the function of the right lane is to move traffic in the opposite direction to the left. It would be absolute carnage if every other vehicle decided to disregard the rules of the road and use any lane they want because it would make it theirs.
Of course the traffic in their own lane has to stop when others are breaking the rules of the road as you don't want to hurt anyone, but it's still dangerous and stupid to ride a bike into oncoming traffic.
Yes the bicycleist are wrong and are only hurting the cause. What if the lady had to get to work with no orher way, or what the hell they do if there was emergency that ambulance needed access. Riding bike on wrong side of the road just makes them assholes. If you don't know its a protest it ineffective. Besides protesting late at night is also dumb. This isn't a protest, just bicycles wanting to be dicks.
Protests need to make sure that no one is ever inconvenienced or made uncomfortable. That way people can just ignore it and we can all feel better about ourselves
That's why the best protests are done by leaving a very mildly offensive joke on mastodon.
Can you explain?
Sarcasm.
Oh, oops, thank you. I got stuck imagining that you were referring to something that actually worked 😂 hoo boy not my shining moment.
Be idealist all you want. If you try to convince someone to join or support your cause by angering them, it won't work. You form enemies, not allies.
If the purpose of this was to make the bikers feel good while turning people against bikers, I'm sure it worked. This protest isn't going to make someone in a car 30 minutes late and think "hey those cyclists just going through red lights, the wrong way, making me late, they got a real good point."
People need to be realistic and realize that whimsical ideals don't seamlessly translate to reality.
what the hell they do if there was emergency that ambulance needed access
So the neat thing about ambulances, and other emergency vehicles, is they have flashing lights AND sierns to let people know they are there.
And protesters always swiftly move to let emergency vehicles through, because they know not to block actually useful vehicles like ambulances and fire engines
I agree, crowds of protesters are far more observant than drivers. I've seen ambulances stuck in new York traffic before
What a spectacular photo.
This guy has a picture of it happening once, in another country, with people stationary on foot, it has to be true. Unless there is a picture floating around out there of people not moving.... That would blow this whole thing up.
God, anecdotal evidence is such brain rot.
Nobody thinks this proves anything. If you think that is what is happening, tend to your own brain rot.
This is evidence supporting an argument, not evidence proving an argument. Feel free to provide contrary evidence.
Oh look, more brain rot.
I can find images of people not moving. That would go against the argument. My point is, cherry picking one or two instances of something proves only that it can happen. Not that it does.
I mean I Googled "protesters blocking emergency vehicles" and got tons of results. So what we a exactly does that picture prove? It happened once? Cool.
Very first result, incase you need it. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/just-stop-oil-waterloo-bridge-ambulance-b2443700.html
The vehicle, which had its blue lights on, was trapped on Waterloo Bridge on Wednesday morning due to congestion caused by Just Stop Oil, Met Police said. Pictures and footage from the scene shared on social media show queues of traffic in both directions on the busy bridge.
The climate campaigners have hit back at the force’s handling of the incident and claimed it was the Met police blocking the ambulance so they could “blame it on a protest march going in the other direction”.
The protesters weren't the one blocking the ambulance. The cars were, and the cops didn't do anything to alleviate that so the ambulance could get through the cars and to the protesters who would've let it through anyway.
You should read the entire article when you try to do a gotcha.
And why were the cars blocking the road? Just think for 2 seconds lol. Protesters not moving, means cars can't move. Because despite what people here believe, normal people don't just drive through people.
The irony is you quoted the answer:
trapped on Waterloo Bridge on Wednesday morning due to congestion caused by Just Stop Oil
Congestion doesn't happen if they move out of the way of traffic. What do you think, everyone was just stopping to wave at them?
But lemme get a few more, just to make it clear.
During a protest on northbound I-5 in downtown Seattle, an ambulance transporting a critically ill 37-year-old man was delayed due to protesters blocking the highway. Medics reported being stuck in a standstill for about a mile. A Washington State Patrol trooper assisted in creating a lane for the ambulance to reach the hospital. The incident resulted in a 19-minute delay in reaching Harborview Medical Center.
Protesters blocked an ambulance outside the St. Petersburg Police Headquarters. The ambulance, which was not on an emergency call, had to reroute due to the demonstration. Police released video footage showing the incident.
Just Stop Oil protesters blocked emergency vehicles during a demonstration in west London. Videos showed both a fire engine and an ambulance with blue lights unable to get through traffic. The Metropolitan Police arrested 28 protesters for “wilful obstruction of the highway.”
Source: The Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/just-stop-oil-block-ambulance-b2200208.html
Approximately 100–200 protesters blocked a highway, delaying an ambulance carrying a critically ill patient. Due to the delay, EMTs had to perform an emergency medical procedure in the ambulance instead of at the hospital.
was that so hard?
cherry picking one or two instances of something proves only that it can happen. Not that it does.
close; it proves it DID happen, which necesarily implies it DOES happen. You are right to object that a single genuine datapoint (or as you like to spin it, "anecdote") cannot say anything about frequency, but I really have to steelman what you are saying to get there.
was that so hard?
No, it's not hard to spoon feed someone information but I didn't think I had to. Fuck, everyone is just the give it to me now, I don't want to have to look into anything. People just take photos at face value and make judgment calls without even the most topical vetting. God this is depressing.
close; it proves it DID happen, which necesarily implies it DOES happen. You are right to object that a single genuine datapoint (or as you like to spin it, "anecdote") cannot say anything about frequency, but I really have to steelman what you are saying to get there.
Close, it proves it did happen, which only proves it did happen once, that's it. It does not, in any way at all, ever, by any form of logic mean it still DOES happen. You can infer that, but that is not what it proves, at all.
A single data point by itself can easily be classified as an anomaly, meaning not normal. Without context you can't determine if it's the rule or the exception, only that it happened once. It could be a 1 trillion to 1 chance and it just happened to be that picture. We have no idea, it means nothing. Trying to act like it does is nothing short of using an unreliable data point (anecdote) to push a narrative.
That's been my experience, bikes also clear out way faster than cars.
Pretty much, more or less, yah.
And bikes are more agile and capable of getting out of the way than cars are
or what the hell they do if there was emergency that ambulance needed access
I'm guessing they would get out of the way?
Then she would have to pull over and wait 10-15 minutes for them to pass. Geez.
In an emergency there would be lights and ee-oo-ee-oo and the bikers would definitely part to let the emergency vehicle.
Literally about 30 seconds, not 10 minutes lol
It's a protest not a rally.
Be glad they're not carrying bricks.