Biking home from work, pickup truck honks at me and does that "angry pass" thing (you know where they pass you going way over the speed limit to take back that 2 seconds of driving time you stole from them). I flip him off. He flips me off. I flip him off again. He pulls over, gets out of his truck, calls me a homophobic slur and threatens to run me over. I call him a homophobic slur back (my bad y'all) and keep biking. He gets back in his truck, and I experience a moment of terror as I wait to see if he will in fact murder me over literally nothing. Fortunately, he relents and drives away.
Fuck. Why do people keep driving cars when it's clear that driving is such a miserable experience that motorists are routinely inches away from flying into a murderous rage? Why the fuck is that my fault? I'm literally the only person I know who's not contributing to the problem. I'll never own a car again. I never want to kill someone. I never want to make someone feel as scared as motorists make me feel. Why does that make me a fringe weirdo?
Like seriously, I've never met another person in my life who would even consider swearing off cars, even though a lot of them seem to understand they're bad. It's so isolating. Like, as scary as experiences like this one are, I'm way more likely to be killed in a so-called "accident" than deliberately run down. Which means every day I have to look at all my friends and family, knowing they all own cars, and think "one day someone just like you is going to kill me, and you're OK with that." And then they say shit like "stay safe out there" like if you want me to be safe stop doing the thing that's gonna kill me!
Anyway, sorry for the rant. Hope this is an OK place to post this stuff.
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It’s a structural problem that needs structural solutions, not good liberals making good liberal personal responsibility decisions.
:this:
If every single person I knew had restrained from driving a car I know for a fact that at least 1 human being would be alive today who is currently dead. I don't know her name but someone I know killed her. It was an "accident" but it was also entirely contingent on that person's choice to drive.
Yes, structural changes are needed, but I don't control municipal policy. All I can do is be out there, showing that there are people who want bike infrastructure, showing that there are viable non-car options with existing infrastructure, and figuring out how to live my life without killing people. If you have access to the levers of power, by all means, change the zoning laws, redo the street cross-sections, repeal the auto subsidies. If you're not in a position to do that stuff, what's your plan to get there? Otherwise "structural problems" is just a cop out. I've heard similar lines from carnists to justify why they eat meat.
If you’re not in a position to do that stuff, what’s your plan to get there? Otherwise “structural problems” is just a cop out.
Tons of people have their hands full just sustaining themselves and their families. Do they need to seek a position in their Liberal democracy with the power to defy global capital's car fetish? Because that position effectively doesn't exist under a system designed to serve global capital
No, you don't have to seek institutional power. You can also do what I'm doing and just get by without putting human and non-human lives in danger by driving. Just don't bring up "structural problems" to justify actively participating in the violence.
You can[...]
Can you? In a place where you have no public transit options, and your work commute is too far to bicycle to, can you?
Yes. If you treat the location of your housing and the location of your job and the distance you feel you can bicycle as all being immutable, and your morals as a secondary concern, then it might seem impossible. But if you reverse the equation, and treat your life circumstances as mutable and your morals as a top priority, then your field of possibility can change. Maybe not literally tomorrow. I didn't ditch my car right away, it was a transition that took me a few years. But I suspect you have more options than you're currently considering as feasible. A thought experiment that helped me think through my options was, "OK, what would I do if I had a disability that prevented me from driving?"
Yes, you can do quite a lot of things if you make them your top priority. I'm already putting my morals first, and I'm glad yours are going well too.
I had a similar situation once on a bike and I just kept saying "What??" "What I can't hear you??" while letting my bike coast slower than his truck idled so he kept having to stop and go like an NPC follow mission. One of my proudest moments.
Sorry you went through that. I was involved in a road rage incident a few years ago, don't wanna get into it I did absolutely nothing aggressive whatsoever and got attacked (got away unscathed luckily) but it turns out That's How You Get Trauma so as much as I try not to admit it do have some from that.
You just have to not play their game. Don't flip someone off on the road. It won't make you feel better, it's not going to make them rethink their life (they WANT you to be mad). It'll either do absolutely nothing or escalate the situation, possibly to violence. It's risking your life for pride. Ignore them friend
Yup this is true, the supposed cathartic response of doing violent outbursts has been proven in studies to not make you feel better and only encourages more angry reactions. Not saying I don't....but I try not to as much knowing that
Oh yeah? I guess that makes sense. To me it mostly feels like adrenaline addiction
Yeah, I know. I don't think I was unjustified in what I did but I think I'm gonna try to retrain those instincts to lessen my chance of getting murked in the future. Better to kowtow to people who are stronger than me than to provoke them.
Sorry to hear you got attacked, glad you were (physically) unharmed.
Damn that sucks. People are losing it in general I think, I was leaving a grocer and walking to my car at maybe 9 PM in one of the safest zip codes in the country and some guy is parked 15yds away from me on opposite side of the aisle, only two cars on that side of the building, right next to to the cart return and starts coming around from having been putting shit in the backseat and sees me walking in what could only be construed as toward him in the vaguest possible terms. From 30ft away he starts talking and initially I thought he must be on the phone but then I process that he just threatened to fucking stab me if I get any closer, calls me "Shaggy" (??? I was wearing a hat), tells me has a knife in his pocket... Like what the fuck, I'm going to mug a guy while carrying my groceries and walking toward the only other car in the lot. It wasn't that scary overall, I was packing pepper spray and figured he must be drunk or something. I just told him to calm down and showed him it was my car over there by unlocking it and he was still yelling crap so I just laughed and reiterated how fucking safe the area is, how much of a baby he is, made a dig about how finacially secure I am... He'd clearly just bought the shitty overpriced SUV because it had a temporary license plate, so I told him he should actually try to return it, get a compact like me and invest the rest in therapy...
Never flip off a driver unless you have a weapon on you and are prepared to use it
I knew a guy who rode a motorcycle. He carried a .40 in his pack for this exact reason.
Californians are so prepared they've had more freeway shootings than pretty much every other country has had normal shootings (being american makes you say crazy shit)
Stay strapped, comrade. Not in hopes to use it, but it helps to relieve the "what if a chud goes batshit on me" fears. Defuse if possible, be prepared for contingencies; it's not a safe world. Glad you're still with us.
When I stay strapped I mean whatever you feel comfortable carrying. Pepper spray, baton, knife, firearm, whatever
I don't really think any weapon is gonna protect me if someone decides to ram me with a truck...
I do kind of wanna get a gun at some point but I don't think it's realistically going to improve my personal safety all that much.
Honestly, just having something within reach alleviates anxiety, for me at least
i can feel myself become a worse person every time i get behind the wheel
I get mad mostly at people who don't understand he concept of merging. Or the suicide mergers who just swing across several lanes without as much as an indication.
I have to drive a van for work and have blind spots on either side that are several meters long and no back windows. Shit is terrifying at times. Should really get some of those multi-angle mirrors or at least an indicator.
Texter drivers, people who stare at their phones at a short light and miss it twice, turn signal deniers, ass riders, coal rollers, donut drivers, mirror mergers, vehicular murder cops, blind spot campers, the list goes on really.
My anger is never directed at the people on the road (except the ones rolling coal and driving agressively in $80k trucks, beca6they know what they're doing), it's directed at the systems we have in place to ensure that 50,000 people die ever year on roads to line the pockets of insurance agencies, car companies, and landlords.
That sucks! Glad you’re ok. Glad you flipped off that loser.
I did a similar thing before to a corvette that ended with me getting punched in the face by an angry giant dude. It sucked. Glad you didn’t get punched.
Some people actually need them to get equipment to and from work. Struggle session engaged (or not because I’m already checking out lol)
Seriously. We can all agree car based infrastructure and society are bad, but it isn’t that hard to differentiate between asshole drivers and people who don’t want to bike for 4 hours to get to work through a literal death trap and arrive (if they do) drenched in sweat.
