Originally Posted by
Jeff Neese
Except that this subforum is about Advocacy and Safety, not FailArmy or America's Funniest Videos.
We all saw an object lesson - it's just that not everyone understands what that lesson is. Just because she walked away relatively unharmed doesn't negate the lesson. She was lucky - the end result could have gone in a completely different direction and become a tragedy. Plenty of people aren't so lucky and end up injured, because they make the same mistake.
Here is an object lesson. Semantics matter.
A well known self appointed bicycling safety expert
on a mission spent over 40 years browbeating anyone who would listen to his advocacy and safety message with judgemental terms about wrong vs. right, correct vs improper, scientific vs. superstitious bicycling techniques and bicycling safety in an unsuccessful attempt to promote his education program on the
ONLY PROPER WAY to ride a bicycle. He also believed in "educating" the non-believers that there is
only one way to be CORRECT, his way.
A refusal to consider semantics important or ignoring the counter productive effect of insulting and negative judgemental language in descriptions of cyclists who don't comply with an alleged ONLY PROPER WAY to ride a bicycle "education" program will drown out whatever merit such an advocacy program might have for the general bicycling public.