[*BCM*] Boston PD no friend of a cyclist

[Anne Wolfe]

> I don't think you can have it both ways.  Either the messengers start 
> following the rules (even though they're adrenaline loaded) or they're

> ruining it for the rest of us.

=v= No, what someone else (real or imagined) does should have no bearing
on what "the rest of us" do.  It's a very very very basic standard of
law enforcement that -- *gasp!* -- one should only be held responsible
for one's own actions.  We should not accept anything short of that.
Not one bit.

But this list accepts this sort of thing all the time.  Starting with
two wheels bad, four wheels good.  The people who want to blow up SUVs
and run them off the road, all that sort of thing.  Happens all the
time.  

It is a very real standard that people should only be held responsible
for their own actions.  Although any time anyone on this list is ever
held accountable the default seems to be "well, it is ok, they're a
cyclist/adrenaline loaded/a nice guy really"

=v= There are motorists out there speeding and killing people right now.
Nobody pulls out your old saw about how they're "ruining it for the rest
of us [motorists]."  The very idea seems absurd.  It is.  It's no less
absurd for bicyclists.

Sure they do, all the time.  Starting right on this list.  See above.
The motorists that cut people off, etc ruin it for the vast majority of
law abiding drivers who live their entire lives not giving cyclists
grief, giving them the right of way, etc.  Of the more than 200 cars
that passed me this morning while I biked to work, only one of them was
an idiot as regards my being a cyclist.  But he does pretty much ruin it
for the rest of them.  

> This can come across to an angry person as "you deserved it."

=v= Hello?  Did you even read the original message?  It was not your
dismissive concoction, "coming across to an angry person,"
IT'S WHAT THE COP ACTUALLY SAID.  Oh, and by the way, people are
responding to the cop's actual behavior here, not because of your other
dismissive concoction that "this list has trouble with authority."

In this instance, yes, this is what the cop actually said.  Most of the
times that this is perceived, those words aren't actually said.  

This list is rather proud of its trouble with authority, I think you'll
find.  You talk about it as though having a problem with authority is a
bad thing.  
 


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