Living Car Free - Disturbing

The middle school near me with a student body of around 350. No helmet laws, no nannys, no dang problems. Pictures taken last year.

Great pics. Can someone explain why ILTB lives in a cycling utopia despite the harsh climate while I live in a mild, southern, temperate climate where 330 days out of the year are good to great for riding, yet nearly nobody chooses to bicycle?

I called and spoke to the assistant principal, she does not know anything about bike rack removals, however i asked if she could take a look and confirm that the bike racks were there or not.

She said they are normally right in the front of the building and that she would call me back after she checks...



- edit. She called me back and said the bike racks are right where they've always been.

It is possible, however, that access to them has been blocked ... I forgot to ask her that... =(

Thank you for checking up on this. I had asked my cousin why he was no longer riding his bike and it may be that he just gave me an excuse. He's beginning to become chubby and I'm worried about his health in the future. I'll make sure to make a trip down there soon and check out the situation personally to get him to start riding his bike again. Thanks, again.

So your point, "What I'm getting at here is our whole society is completely, totally, and ROYALLY (insert expletive)-up!" applies everywhere, or not at all?

When I said "our society" I should have clarified humanity in general. Name one country in this world (other than Iceland or Norway) that can be considered perfect in a societal context.

I'll probably get thumped for saying so, but I've noticed a huge cultural divide here; it's as if we're talking about two totally different societies. Those who post from the South report a culture that is positively hostile to bicycling in all its forms (No bike racks at the high school, trying to give a ticket to a person who's only trying to get to work by bike); other places in North America report full bike racks, with a demand for more. I know that here in Seattle, the very suggestion that you couldn't ride a bike to school or work would be greeted with blank stares of incomprehension. (People up here tend to be too passive aggressive to actually tell you you're full of of s****.) Is it just my imagination, or is this cultural difference a real one?

i'm not trying to insult anybody here -- in fact, two things before i continue: chances are if you're on this forum, you're not part of the problem i'm referring to; and, if you're intelligent enough to be insulted, i'm not referring to you.

but here goes: having lived in the South for several years, i became well acquainted with the dominant mindset, which is, sadly, no too bright. foxworthy's joke about the highways, 'where merge is a personal challenge', is 100% correct. nowhere else have i seen conditions where you can check your mirror before a lane change, see a football field of space to the car/truck behind you, yet have a tailgater by the time you complete the 2-second maneuver! speed rules in the South -- hey, NASCAR is practically a state sport down there! it's intellect that breeds tolerance, and there's not a lot of tolerance in 'dixie'.

bicycling is simply too much physical exertion for young people, especially at the very early hours of the morning...we need to eliminate gym class as well for these same rather obvious reasons ...we also need to make sure that students do not have too walk too far between classes (certainly without carrying books or other study materials), distances should be kept to a minimum or eliminated where possible...

while we're at it, let's make sure that all organic foods are removed from schools, and they are compelled to serve only hot dogs and texas fries with a side of coke. oh, what the hey -- let's not teach 'em to walk, and just put the little stinkers in wheelchairs the first day of school -- motorized, of course, so they can use the joystick that their video games have made an extension of their fingers.

time to implement that virtual teaching, or better yet, perfect sleep-teaching....

Crazy, believable AND a straw man. Sounds like an urban legend was discussed somewhere by somebody(ies). I could give you equally crazy examples of society's overprotectiveness that I know for a fact to be true. So even if it's a legend, it did not just appear out of nowhere for no reason. Stuff like this is all around us. Aren't you the one to always complain about safety nannies?

Ironically, I have found protective measures to often make things more dangerous. For example, waaay back when I was in elementary school, I remember that they started making things "safer". One item in particular was the tire they placed beneath each end of the teeter totter so that kids couldn't bump each other hard. The trouble with that was most kids weren't used to it, and the result was that more kids got hurt on the teeter totters (ankles caught under them or whatever) the first month than had probably gotten hurt the whole previous year combined. Plus it just wasn't as fun. It's not as if any of the injuries kids ever sustained were serious.

Anyway... at my high school, they had bicycle racks... in the elementary end. Basically, I refused to park at that end of the school (you know how dumb kids can be, trying to wreck a nice bike. Granted, mine is a frankenbike, which would give all the more incentive to the few kritters who do that sort of thing). I asked to have a bike rack put in by the entrance we were required to use at the senior high end, but nothing got done. So I just strapped my bike to a thick, ABS drain pipe by the door each day, which is where most kids parked their bikes. Every now and again the principal would tell me that I can't park my bike there, and I must use the racks. The first time this happened, I quit riding my bike to school and just walked. After almost half a year of this, I started riding again. The next time he told me, I think I walked for a day, and then carried on. If he ever told me again, I probably just ignored it, because I know he would likely forget about it himself anyway.

At college, I live so close to the Administrative Building (where we have classes) that I really don't need to ride bike (We live maybe 50 meters away, although there is some guy who does bike to the building from the dorms. It's kinda funny, actually.)

When I said "our society" I should have clarified humanity in general. Name one country in this world (other than Iceland or Norway) that can be considered perfect in a societal context.
Is that what you are looking for, a "perfect society"? Me, I'll spend my time searching for the "Fountain of Youth." Let's see who completes the Quest first.

Aren't you the one to always complain about safety nannies?
Yes, I am. Nannies complaining and demanding solutions for non -existent or insignificant problems. Over reaction (to the point of hysteria) to rumors, old wives tales, urban legends, and out right fabrications in association with counterproductive "solutions" is the calling card for the Safety Nannies.

I find them more disturbing than their fabricated tales of terror.

Yes, I am. Nannies complaining and demanding solutions for non -existent or insignificant problems. Over reaction (to the point of hysteria) to rumors, old wives tales, urban legends, and out right fabrications in association with counterproductive "solutions" is the calling card for the Safety Nannies.

I find them more disturbing than their fabricated tales of terror. They don't just complain and demand. They go ahead and do things. Pass laws and call social workers.

They don't just complain and demand. They go ahead and do things. Pass laws and call social workers.

Unfortunately, you are spot-on.

Rediculous laws, rules and decisions are being made because most of us are too busy living our lives to worry about such things.

The "nannies", however, are at all the association, council and planning meetings putting in their 2cents.

I am slowly realizing that I have to get out and become more involved in community politics - not to implement my changes - but to prevent some of these people from completely ruining it.

GGDub is correct. We should hold our ire for the trial lawyers not the school officials.

What piffle! Do you think there are 12 trial lawyers in the jury box?

They don't just complain and demand. They go ahead and do things. Pass laws and call social workers.
Even when they don't, eh? Are all Urban Legends and rumors true just because you believe them? :rolleyes:

What piffle! Do you think there are 12 trial lawyers in the jury box?

So you want me to go on a rant about our public school system, heh?

Even when they don't, eh? Are all Urban Legends and rumors true just because you believe them? :rolleyes: I don't believe them all. But I can easily quote several cases of paranoid rules off the top of my head because they happened to people I know. You want 'em?

I wouldn't keep them on the top of your head, sounds dangerous. Maybe they should put warning labels on them.

I don't believe them all. But I can easily quote several cases of paranoid rules off the top of my head because they happened to people I know. You want 'em?
No.

school officials are scared for good reason -- the lawyers! USA has 77% of the world's lawyers, and more in law school than the rest of the world has in full practice! when you can be sued, successfully, because some silly old witch burns her ^&%# spilling McD's coffee that SHE set down there to start with, well....

special interests act like super-moms, trying to protect us from every 1% of risk in life, and those &^%$^%$^$%^%#^% lawyers flocking to the cause like piranha to a belly-slit goat, the average american citizen has little chance. we need a LOT more commonsense in the court system; case in point, it would be great if things like this happened more often:

woman const. worker sued her employer for sex discrim. over a centerfold posted at the jobsite -- she won the case -- was awarded $1. when people learn that the courtroom isn't a cash cow you can milk at will, silliness will stop.

P.S. what do you have when 65 lawyers in a school bus roll off a cliff? a tragedy; what's a crying shame? one empty seat on the bus.


why is it always the lawyer's fault? why not the judge's or the juror's or the lawmaker's fault? explain that to me.

What piffle! Do you think there are 12 trial lawyers in the jury box?
No, but unfortunately, at least eight of the twelve are there because they were too dumb to come up with an excuse that would get them out of jury duty. How else do you explain multimillion dollar awards for too-hot coffee at a drive-thru? :eek:

What's an example of this?

I'm not saying schools aren't a dangerous area. I live off of a road with three of them, and it's extremely dangerous - almost exclusively because of the huge numbers of parents picking up/dropping off their kids.

One of these moms probably pulled out without looking and almost ran over a ped. She was likely the head of the PTA and started a crusade to protect the poor kids whose parents forced them to walk and ride a bike.

My stance is we should protect the kids by banning car pickup/dropoff.

I live near a private highschool, and you can't get within 6 blocks of the place with all the SUVs, during pickup and dropoff times, which is sad because the street is a designated bike route, and has a bus that runs along it as well. The only real solution is to raise the price of gas to about $2/L, see how many 6MPG SUVs still get used after that.... :D

why is it always the lawyer's fault? why not the judge's or the juror's or the lawmaker's fault? explain that to me.
Most jurors are a bunch of mopes who couldn't avoid jury duty. The judge is a lawyer, himself. Unless you want to blame the system's problems on people who were forced to be in a situation few people would want to deal with, it comes back to the lawyers.

How else do you explain multimillion dollar awards for too-hot coffee at a drive-thru? :eek:
Maybe by listening to something other than gossip, stereotyped ranting, and reading from little bit more than the fluff found in the National Enquirer or People Magazine.

It must be nice to be an authority on legal subjects by reading headlines, eh? Sometimes there may be a few details not found in the headlines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's_coffee_case

FWIW, the first elementary school I went to, K-1, had a 2" galvanized water pipe bar on a series of 2" galvanized water pipe posts set in concrete. That was our bike rack. I don't remember anybody even locking their bikes back then, mid-60's. The second elementary school I attended had a real bike rack. A long one that was often pretty full.

No bike rack in jr. high (middle school), everybody locked up to a chain-link fence.

In high school we were back to the 2" water pipe.

The first jr. college I attended, I had an in with the P.E. Dept. and kept my bike in one of the equipment rooms, although there were bike racks scattered around the campus.

How else do you explain multimillion dollar awards for too-hot coffee at a drive-thru? :eek:
Because sometimes companies are negligent and deserve to get sued, i.e. the too hot coffee case. The problem with awards like this is, other people resent that they didn't think of it first.

GGDub said that "North American society has become one that makes decisions based on fear and liability and not on common sense." He's right but you've got to realize that the lawyers aren't the ones MAKING the decisions based on fear and liability. The school officials are the scared decision makers.
an idea. we do have school boards to b!tch to.

The problem is people tend to shy away from danger instead of confronting it.

The true danger is unsafe drivers. The reason they shy away from it is, they are often as much a cause of the problem as the next person...so they are afraid of getting nailed by heavy-handed legislation that they would have to pass to deal with it.

Really, I think that the real answer is to have mandatory driving tests along with written tests for every license renewal (and make the renewal every 5 years). Make the tests VERY thorough (anything lower than 95% right should be a failing grade). Along with that, we should have tougher enforcement.....no letting anyone off with a warning for trafic infractions, and the point system needs to be re-adjusted to allow for the occaisional snafus (we are human after all, so we will screw up every now and then), but to also enforce a VERY high driver competancy level.

Most jurors are a bunch of mopes who couldn't avoid jury duty. The judge is a lawyer, himself. Unless you want to blame the system's problems on people who were forced to be in a situation few people would want to deal with, it comes back to the lawyers.So everyone who does jury duty is stupid? Gee thanks. It took me years to come up with a good excuse :) In the mean time, it seems like I was getting called like clockwork. I even pondered committing a small crime so that I would have a permanent excuse out.

What people that haven't been on a jury don't understand is that the jurists do not have the privilege of hearing/viewing the case the same way the rest of the world does. They're under instructions not to talk about the case with their spouses or coworkers. If they overhear something about the case, they must report it to the judge. If the case is in the media, they may even receive instructions not to watch television or read the paper. In serious cases, they may even be sequestered.

The upshot is that the entire information flow is controlled by the judges and lawyers. Before the trial begins, the judges and lawyers from all sides get together and decide what evidence is admissible. No "Perry Mason" episodes with someone running into the court at the last minute with a bloody knife in their hand.

The jurists are generally average, reasonably intelligent people. Maybe a little more than average since they could all read their jury summons. They usually spend way more time going over the actual details of the case than someone watching a 20 second news feature on TV would. At the end, they arrive at the same conclusions that most anyone else, without a chip on their shoulder or prior prejudice, would given the same, limited evidence.

Crazy but completely believable. Wasn't there a case discussed on these boards of a kid who walked a mile to school and whose principal called the parents and threatened to set the social workers on them for forcing the kid to undertake such a perilous journey?

It's entirely believable. I rode my bike to school once when it was -12 ... They were all over me. I told them to leave me alone... I had a choice... wait 20 minutes or so in the cold for the bus, ride it for 45 minutes (We're near the START of the route, not the end) or... get on my bike and ride the 1 mile to school.

And as far as bike racks go... we never had one at my school... I locked up to a tree, or a fence in the back, depending on what classes I needed to go to.

Part of the problem is where they build the schools. Many kids have to travel on or cross busy streets. A lot of neighborhood schools are being closed and consolidated with other schools in order to get economies of scale--applying the Walmart business plan to our children's education! When I was a kid in the 1960s, my elementary and middle schools were right in our neighborhood, only a few blocks away. Every kid walked to school, none were driven because the school was a close, safe distance from home. That's no longer true in many areas.

No, but unfortunately, at least eight of the twelve are there because they were too dumb to come up with an excuse that would get them out of jury duty. How else do you explain multimillion dollar awards for too-hot coffee at a drive-thru? :eek:


Where do you get your information? Have you ever been on a jury? No? I didn't think so.

I've been on civil and criminal juries and I was impressed with the care and intelligence they applied to the cases.

I've watched a lot of court cases too. Believe it or not, it's a lot different than what you've seen on TV. Although I've seen some pretty bad exceptions, most of the judges, defenders and prosecutors I've seen were competent. In fact, the witnesses and even the defendants seem to do a pretty good job most of the time.