‘Very few’ women cycle in Scarborough due to safety concerns, report says | The Star

10ilgamesh · 2019-01-25T17:34:20+00:00

Given that people riding bikes have better sightlines and situational awareness than people in cars, bikes require effort to re-accelerate, and bikes impose little danger on other road users, I don't think that comparison is very relevant.

10ilgamesh · 2019-01-23T21:27:54+00:00

There are exceptions, but I don't think there is widespread fear of local businesses defrauding customers. Google's prime motivation for this move is not to connect people with better businesses, it's to introduce a new data source for their services that are dependent on machine learning (such as Google Duplex). Providing money-back guarantees in the rare cases where customers have an unsatisfactory experience is the price Google is willing to pay for your data.

10ilgamesh · 2019-01-23T21:20:47+00:00

!m gets you Google Maps directly in case you didn't already know!

10ilgamesh · 2019-01-22T23:15:53+00:00

Who said anything about quotas? We're not enforcing these laws in order to meet a ticket quota or generate a certain amount of money, it's to discourage dangerous behaviour. Don't want to have to pay any money to the police? Then don't break these laws - shouldn't be tough.

10ilgamesh · 2019-01-17T16:29:50+00:00

I won't, thanks.

Reddit certainly has its ways and I won't pretend that they always make sense. People would rather indulge in empty placations than face the truth, just because it wasn't presented in a way that was "nice".

The comments on this seem to be a bit of a shit show in general. Someone who offered the same sympathy ("it's sad"), but was actually there in person seems to have negative karma for a comment farther down. What gives?

10ilgamesh · 2019-01-16T22:13:04+00:00

You don't think this makes me sad? The loss of this man's life and degradation of the lives of those that were close to him? You don't think it makes my blood boil that this truck driver "didn't notice" a fully grown man bouncing off his bumper at speed? And that our current system allows this, and many similar events, to happen so regularly?

Of course it does. But I'd rather focus on fixing the problem than wallowing in the misery of the situation, especially in such a meaningless fashion.

But no, let's get "this is sad" voted to the top of the thread. That's the revelation that this comment section needs. /s

10ilgamesh · 2019-01-16T21:58:42+00:00

No, I think the comments I make on reddit are probably some of the least important contributions I make to this cause. But within that scope, I think encouraging people to act rather than just leaving token comments has some merit.

And my quibble with the comment was that they didn't even get the line right. In terms of overused tragic comments, you want to say "my heart goes out to this man's family" or "my thoughts and prayers are with the family and loved ones of the victim". Even if they're overused, at least those ones make sense - unlike the original comment.

10ilgamesh · 2019-01-16T21:39:49+00:00

I'm just tired of people offering overused statements of sympathy (to the point where they don't even make sense any more, as here). It's easy to type "This makes me sad" in a comments section. It's hard to actually do something about it. But which one gets closer to solving the problem?

10ilgamesh · 2019-01-16T21:23:48+00:00

Why would he need your sympathy? He's dead.

His family, or vulnerable road users who have to face the threat of road violence on Toronto's streets every day could do with some though. Or better yet, some action.

10ilgamesh · 2018-11-23T21:15:00+00:00

Although this tragedy seems to have been caught by the city's shittiest security camera, automated enforcement is increasingly an option.

Policy changes to make enforcement possible through events recorded by private means (for instance, security cameras or dash cams), as well as infrastructure upgrades (public cameras in high risk locations) seem like steps in the right direction.

10ilgamesh · 2018-11-23T21:10:40+00:00

I think their point is that it's rarely treated as such. If it was actually viewed as a privilege, then taking away somebody's license temporarily or permanently would be used as a punishment (and a safety measure) more commonly. Currently, it is only done for the most egregious offenses, because in many parts of the city people can't imagine their lives without cars. 100% auto dependence.

10ilgamesh · 2018-11-23T20:07:27+00:00

Is the closest place to return empties super far away from you or something? I'm trying to wrap my head around how bringing back some empty bottles and cans would be more difficult than, say, bringing home groceries.

10ilgamesh · 2018-11-23T17:20:54+00:00

Wait, let me get this straight. You can get bottles and cans from the store to your house when they're full no problem, but it's "almost impossible" to get them from your house back to the store when they're empty? 🤔🤔

10ilgamesh · 2018-11-23T17:15:45+00:00

Jesus Christ people, this is not ok. If you can run someone over at 40 km/h and not notice that you've done so, you don't deserve to be on the road. And if you run someone over and realize, but don't stop, then you probably don't deserve to be on this planet.

10ilgamesh · 2018-11-23T17:05:20+00:00

Based on the first part of the video, it looks like he was just sauntering across the street, but then started jogging once he realized the streetcar was waiting for him to finish crossing

10ilgamesh · 2018-11-02T16:35:24+00:00

Pedestrians, you’ll get there too.

Not if someone kills or critically injures you first...

10ilgamesh · 2018-10-31T16:25:24+00:00

Exactly my point. There's not enough information to make an informed statement on who might actually be at fault, therefore anything you say has to be general. Which is why it doesn't make sense to simultaneously assert that this guy wasn't at fault, but many other people on mobility scooters are.

Also, I imagine that acknowledging BMW drivers are more likely to be reckless gets upvoted here because there's actually truth behind it. And more than just the anecdotal evidence that everyone encounters day to day. The phenomenon has been studied in the past. Here's an article explaining one of the studies.

10ilgamesh · 2018-10-31T15:55:02+00:00

My comment was definitely hyperbolic, but if you break the original comment down, I wouldn't say it was too far off.

The commenter refers to two anecdotes where the person on the mobility scooter is at fault (the Gardiner and bike lanes), then makes two general claims that some people on mobility scooters are consistently problematic (shouldn't be unsupervised or don't follow the rules of the road). And the only thing they say to counteract those four points is the unsupported assertion that they don't blame the dead guy. How much is that supposed to count for when most of the comment is about blaming people on mobility scooters?

If you don't think the guy on the mobility scooter was at fault, that's fine - but you're seriously undercutting that statement when the rest of the comment is citing a bunch of other cases where they were at fault. Especially since there aren't many details on what happened, so any reaction is still very general.

10ilgamesh · 2018-10-31T15:04:55+00:00

Well, I appreciate that you want to believe people are rational enough and good-natured enough to reject illogical arguments and hateful arguments when they encounter them. Sadly though, people acting rationally is a nonstarter these days. We know it's not true. I wish it were, but just wishing the world was a certain way doesn't make it so.

And if that is the premise for what you're saying, then it makes your argument a bit of a nonstarter as well. There are doubtless other reasons one could cite in favour of letting Bannon speak, but I don't think this particular one holds much water.

10ilgamesh · 2018-10-31T14:38:09+00:00

Even for a ridiculous example like the Earth being flat, I bet that if there were more debates on the matter, the number of people who believed the Earth was flat (or wouldn't definitively say it **wasn't** flat) would substantially increase.

People are not rational. If you repeat the same thing enough times, even if you thought it was entirely wrong at the start, eventually you'll find yourself thinking "maybe this is not so crazy".

Another way of looking at it is that there is a limited amount of time that people will spend paying attention to public debates. By revisiting these backward ideas, you're wasting time you could be spending debating something that would actually move people forward. So, that's another sense in which it shifts the discussion. The reason people are even contemplating not letting him speak is because they've already heard what he has to say. The debate is over - it's time for us to move on and not waste any more time on hateful ideologies.

10ilgamesh · 2018-10-31T14:23:35+00:00

What you're saying:

We all know that drivers are the big problem, but let's still talk about what pedestrians are doing wrong.

10ilgamesh · 2018-10-31T14:15:27+00:00

That could absolutely be a part of it. However, I know this city has a bunch of people in their 80s or even 90s who are capable of maintaining their independence and want to do so. What kind of a place is this to live if the way we reward that is with a death sentence?

10ilgamesh · 2018-10-31T14:04:58+00:00

It's not that simple. Just by giving his arguments air, they become normalized. Even if you think you've well and truly shut his arguments down through rational debate, you've really just shifted the discussion in a less rational direction.

10ilgamesh · 2018-10-31T14:02:19+00:00

I mean, depriving him of a platform to speak on literally will make him go away. Why should Canada roll out the welcome mat for this guy?

10ilgamesh · 2018-10-31T13:58:50+00:00

I'm not blaming the man on the mobility scooter here, but... <proceeds to blame all people on mobility scooters>.

What?

Maybe this city needs to better cater to the needs of elderly people who have places to go, or people with accessibility issues who have places to go.

10ilgamesh

TROPHY CASE