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.
Sure, fuck cars and all that, but jesus that is a stupid way to protest. Being very squishy and in low visibility (because it’s night), riding slowly while blocking all lanes. Sure, I support their cause, they probably DO need better bicycle infrastructure, but ffs, don’t put your fucking life on the line like this. All it takes is 1 lunatic who roadrages, and you’re dead.
Isn’t this true for all protests? My understanding is that people who do them doesn’t agree to live with in the constrains drawn by small number of raging lunatics with oppression tools. That’s why they organize. Into masses.
Possibly, but do people really wanna be martyrs for a fucking bike lane?
There is a freekonomic episode about how the easiest way to murder someone in US is to run them with your car. There is a reasonable chance you’ll go free. US is so car-centric that it’s a dogma that car accidents are unavoidable part of life.
So “for bike lane” seams very reductive.
There is an argument that more people will die because lack of protest like that than during those.
This hypothetically raging lunatic don’t disappear when you are alone, trying to survive on the infrastructure build without any consideration that you exist. If he’s a danger here, he’s a danger there. Where you are alone.
(Also, where I live protest like those are coordinated with police. Why is no one protecting nor serving here?)
Yes.
Source: stood in a bike lane while drivers deliberately rammed me with their car. Twice.
The bike lane in question has plastic barriers protecting it now. Frankly, that direct action was more successful than the previous decade of activism the “proper” way by showing up to planning meetings and such.
You’re right. It’s a stupid way to protest. Instead we should be setting fire to cars parked in bike lanes.
Honestly. Assuming you make sure people aren’t actually in the cars before lightning them on fire, that would be a much safer, and much more efficient way to protest. No one is going to park their car in bike lanes if there’s a high chance they’ll come back to a charred mess.
Nobody wants logic here
Of course not. The people applauding the cyclists here and deriding the motorist would be the same ones upset if it was a video of a cyclist encountering a bunch of cars driving illegally on bike paths/lanes.
Huh, it’s almost as if cars aren’t the same thing as bicycles, differing greatly in aspects like vulnerability, respect from drivers, and existence of suitable infrastructure. Or said another way, it’s almost as if punching up isn’t the same thing as punching down. Who’da thunk it?
Never said they were. I posited that reversing the roles would upset people (like you clearly) who applaud the cyclists and deride the motorist.
If you’d be upset by people driving their cars on a bike path in protest of losing road space due to cycling infrastructure they’d be idiots but they’d be the same kind of idiots as these cyclists.
I think treating others as you wish to be treated is generally the simplest, safest rule to live by.
What you’re doing is analogous to clutching your pearls about “white lives matter.” It only seems fair or reasonable if you willfully ignore the power dynamics involved.
The oppressed are entitled to get upset about acts of aggression against them. The oppressors are not entitled to get upset when their victims fight back.
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Sure. The power dynamic “doesn’t exist”.
You’re a fucking moron.
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very well i’m sorry for calling their face a stupid way to protest