Cyclists - obviously!
There is a lot of competition - but there's no real doubt about the winners.
Cycling is just a minority hobby pursued by boring monomaniacs; yet my home city has spent hundreds of millions of pounds, and subtracted hundreds of millions of man-hours from the lives of its resident, to accommodate the whims of this tiny cadre of selfish, over-indulged pin-heads.
Cyclists are also arch-enemies of the mass majority of sensible, decent, real people: salt of the earth: the pedestrians.
I had a lot of trouble with cyclists in the area near Manchester University. A number of them seemed to feel entitled to jump red lights and on more than one occasion this nearly caused an accident. Not one of them ever apologised or held their hand up. I don't want to tar everyone with the same brush, and I occasionally cycle myself to get from A to B, but on the whole I find modern cyclists hugely arrogant and entitled. They strike me as a very smug section of society, who see themselves as superior to car/bus drivers and pedestrians. A little humility and sense of solidarity with all road users wouldn't go amiss.
ReplyDeleteCyclists comprise a far more significant fraction of the population than homosexuals (even with the continual expansion of the LGBT+), and the accommodations they demand are far less costly to society as a whole.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lingering scent of the elite dissatisfaction with the existence of powered vehicles available to the masses, but on the whole I find it futile to waste energy complaining that there are too many adults still riding bicycles. In a healthy advanced society, children ride bicycles or some similar rider-powered vehicle. Adults who continue to insist on it to an excessive degree may be regarded as childish, but in moderation it shouldn't be regarded as a vice.
It's necessary to distinguish cyclists from people who ride bikes...
ReplyDeleteRight, just as we must distinguish extreme weightlifters from people who train for health and strength!
ReplyDelete@Karl - Ultimately, these things are a matter of motivation. We cannot know for sure another person's motivation, but we must make a judgment of it, and act on that judgment.
ReplyDeleteRural Yorkshire is probably one of the most pedestrian-unfriendly places I've had the pleasure to visit. A combination of old narrow oxcart roads (that don't have room for both pedestrians and cars in two directions) hemmed in by heritage stone walls (that can't be demolished), with aggressive drivers (on hilly terrain that encourages downhill acceleration) and oddly shaped medieval buildings (that interrupt the sidewalk, forcing the pedestrians to either go back and find a crosswalk, or dodge cars).
ReplyDeleteAll the result of ramming a new kind of vehicle, en masse, into a sacred terrain that wasn't ever designed for it.
Cyclists distinguish themselves from reputable bike-riders with that ridiculous multicolored skintight uniform they all wear!
ReplyDeleteI'll say again that the over-expenditure on "cyclist" infrastructure is not driven by the political activism of cyclists themselves (however distinct or not from 'normal' bicycle riders), but by the distaste of political elites for the idea of privately owned motor-vehicles.
ReplyDeleteThis distaste would drive the tendency to promote and construct cycling infrastructure even if there were no cyclists in the population at all.
@CCL - Yes but that applies to all entitled groups; but in no other is the disproportion so great, or so annoying.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's because other groups are not as much the invention of rather than the justification for the policies that promote their supposed interests.
ReplyDeleteThe cyclist is what some in government should like to make of most citizens, rather than how those in government display their supreme compassion for the unfortunate.
Take the motorbike pill. It is a kind of a cheat code.
ReplyDelete