Originally Posted by
Don in Austin
Sometimes I walk places in the city. I regularly see pedestrians enter intersections against a red light or "don't walk," I see people too lazy to go to a nearby crosswalk and instead cross mid-block basically daring traffic to mow them down. i suppose we pedestrians have "brought it on ourselves?"
I used to tow my race car home from a dirt track 80 miles away and enter the city on a freeway at 1:30 AM Sunday. I was pretty much the only sober driver on the road. Have we motorists "brought it on ourselves?"
Do you tell law-abiding members of a minority group "you have brought it on yourselves" because some members of a minority group are in a gang?
Do you tell white, middle class males who practice tolerance and love towards all groups that they can be considered bigots and because of the attitudes of some white middle class males they have "brought it on themselves?"
Total BS! A person is responsible for his/her own actions and only his/her own actions.
Don in Austin
Do you tell all cell phone users they can't use their phones while driving, even though only some drivers doing so get into accidents?
Do you tell drinkers not to drive, even though most of the time (such as 1:30AM Sunday in your state)most of those drunk drivers aren't actually having accidents?
The law certainly does!
Generalizing, though often odious, racist and wrong-headed, is a necessary part of the legal system, as well as a vital tool for understanding the world.
Just because you feel that everyone should be judged as an individual doesn't mean that that's how it works. People often do condemn all cyclists when they've been injured by one. The OP certainly isn't biased against cyclists! He is rightly concerned with how it makes us look to people who make & enforce laws, many of whom will lump us all together if it suits their purposes.