Mark Stone

If you've lost 2 friends to drunk drivers, how do you think that jokes about drunk driving are funny? Why do you think that type of content is appropriate in a thread about distracted driving? Do you make Cancer jokes in a forum for cancer survivors, or people that have lost loved ones to cancer? Do you make dead soldier jokes in a forum dedicated to supporting families of our slain military? What kind of a "Sense of humor" do you have? Do you think I'm "safer-than-thou", "horrors, the sky is falling", "everybody but me is so reckless", "ain't it awful" kind of person? For some of us the pain of loss is very real, please take your immature wisecracks somewhere else.

I-Like-To-Bike

Take your melodramatic response to https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...ial-Statements

bandit1990

Glad you got that off your chest. Now can we continue with a discussion about distracted driving?

Mark Stone

Actually I'll leave it here. I'm great at melodrama, one of my strongest points - wouldn't you agree?

Mark Stone

Go for it.

I-Like-To-Bike

in this discussion group of the overly Melodramatic, you may be the King/Queen!

bandit1990

No, you are not great a melodraoma. If you are looking to incite a response from the masses, you may have found a niche. But distracted driving is problem here (U.S.). Your attitude doesn't help the cause. Driniking and driving is not "distracted driving". You need to focus on texting while driving, or talking on the phone. Give facts about that, and I might read your opinions.

Mark Stone

I learned from the best!

Mark Stone

I think you need to read the prededing posts

bandit1990

Why not? Unfortunately, I still get the same reaction that I had before.

Mark Stone

I'm not following. What reaction? Are you saying we never should have brought up drunk driving? That was "Dave's Not Here" in post 48, not I. I think jokes about drunk driving are distasteful, so I told him so. Of course, if you think the thousands of people that have died because of distracted drunk drivers is funny, then I think you have a problem just like him.

bandit1990

Distracted driving and drunk driving are quite different. One is a rational choice, while the other a irrational choice. Distracted driving should be the biggest detriment to cycling. More distracted drivers than drunk drivers on the road right now.

Keith99

It isn't about something being important, unless it is that the driver thinks they are so important that they cannot "waste" any time.

Very near to where I work is an Albertsons. Turning left out of the parking lot is not easy, just the way the traffic and curves in the road work out.

But I regularly see people tryingto make a left turn out of the lot while on their cell phone. Too busy to finish the call when parked I guess. (Ironically this is also an area where the Sheriffs are an arm of the IRS, e.g they are a revenue generating part of government). With any luck they ahve nailed a few cell phone drivers.

genec

yes, but according to ILTB, such distractions apparently don't matter... to cyclists or anybody. Just go about your business.

Daves_Not_Here

thatsh not a very nice thing to shay to bandit1990, comparing him to me. crap - how do you type capital letters with one hand - maybe if i shteer with my kneesh -- There, Got It! Cheersh!

I-Like-To-Bike

What are you, the new John Forester, attributing your straw man arguments to others with deliberately false paraphrasing?

Accidents and injuries matter; causes of same matter; hysterical, "horrified" ranting about anything and everything that someone thinks will be the cause of every dang accident is not productive.

Read the same brand of hot air know-nothing rhetoric every time listening to music while cycling, or helmet wear is brought up in this forum.

Mark Stone

That's true. I think the vast majority of drivers are distracted - cell phones, GPS navigation, satellite radios, other gadgets. I see cage ads on tv that advertise touchscreens. They've made laws against using your mobile and texting, but that's only part of the problem. I think I'm going to be using "defensive riding" tactics - staying off busy streets, keeping my eye on my rear-view mirror in case I need to bale

chrisb71

Because studies have shown that BOTH of those are distracting. So yes, talking to a passenger is distracting, but it would be impossible to make that illegal. It's probably impossible to enforce hands-free talking too, since people could be talking to themselves.

Here is one such study:
https://www.rodale.com/distracted-drivers

talking to passengers:
https://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/116

genec

Talking to passengers means that they see out the car windows too and can and will delay comments based on traffic load, and in some cases contribute to the drivers information flow by spotting other traffic and hazards and alerting the driver.

This cannot happen when talking to a person who is remote from you. Also studies have shown that when people talk to distant others, they tend to visualize that person or situation that is being discussed, further removing cognition from the task at hand, which is driving.

Passengers can be distracting, please don't misunderstand, and for this reason some states issue provisional licenses for youth that forbid passengers in the car.

genec

Some folks can chew gum and walk, others not.

hagen2456

Does your description cover the OP, too? Because if that's the case, I find it a bit difficult to take your humour seriously.

I-Like-To-Bike

IMO: The OP's descriptions of of other's driving actions remind me of Forester's descriptions of the numerous cyclists that he "observed" who never looked at all for opposing traffic before crossing intersections. Inflated rhetoric, that matches the biased observer's predetermined perceptions of reality.

IOW the OP "saw" what he/she was looking for and is embellishing in order to make a point. People may be using cell phones to talk, that doesn't equate to incapacitated drivers unable to function effectively as drivers, nor does it necessarily make them all deaf, dumb and blind as some of our hysterical posters maintain.

ChrisM2097

A distracted driver plowed into my brother's car last Wednesday on the 101, on his way to work in Redwood City. Traffic came to an abrupt stop. The person behind him was texting and hit him at over 50 mph. It was a 4-car pile-up. Everyone walked away with minor injuries - but my brother's brand new Toyota is totaled, and the person that caused all the damage has the state-minimum insurance coverage (at least she has insurance).

On my commute home last Friday, a distracted driver that had just passed me swerved into the bike lane about 50' in front of me, and almost hit some parked cars. I'm glad I was riding a little slow that day, or else the broken chain would have been the least of my worries.

hagen2456

Hyperbole aside, it's a pretty well established fact that driving while talking on a cell phone is just as dangerous as drunk driving. And then, of course, there are all the other things, the OP observed. They don't strike me as something he made up. And most of them are equally dangerous. So, I think you should reserve your, er, humour for those who deserve it.

manapua_man

You might want to get off the internet before you get even more offended.


Also, I've only been hit three times. All of them by old people backing out of parking stalls while I walked my bike into a store (same store each time).