this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
61 points (86.7% liked)
Australia
3611 readers
134 users here now
A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.
Before you post:
If you're posting anything related to:
- The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
- Politics, post it to Australian Politics
- World News/Events, post it to World News
- A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian
If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News
Rules
This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:
- When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment
Banner Photo
Congratulations to @[email protected] who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australian News
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Australian Politics
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
- Aussie Memes
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
Moderation
Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.
Additionally, we have our instance admins: @[email protected] and @[email protected]
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
He hasn't really convinced me that cyclists shouldn't be fined for breaking the law the same as drivers. He has however convinced me that the speed limit on that bridge is laughably too low.
Yeah the video didn't really focus as much on that point as it probably should have to earn its title. It made a few points in that regard, but the focus was more on that specific speed limit.
But I would ask, very simply: why should the punishment be the same? That's really the most relevant way of framing it, because that's the positive claim being made, and you can't really prove a negative other than to suggest that there's no evidence in favour of the positive. (I can't prove "there's no yeti", but I can say "well there's no evidence on which to justify believing in a yeti.") It shouldn't be on cycling advocates to justify why the punishment should be less, but on the car-brained to explain why they should be the same.
So why should the punishment be the same? The risk is drastically less, as evidenced by the crash rates and crash severity. So what is it?
For the same reason we don't fine drivers $10 for driving like idiots. If cyclists can ride around town with no regard for safety and the law, because the worst they'll face is a $10 fine, then why should they be safe riders?
Because riding around unsafely is a good way to end up in the back of an ambulance.
It's not about the $, it's about the survivability of an accident.
Sitting here, that sounds like a reasonable argument. Yet experience shows us that people are idiots. They go around with the mentality of 'It will never happen to me.'
Have a look at this on the ABC today. Specifically the bit about the lack of road rules in the late 60's:
There you are - evidence that laws about road safety save lives. That's no statistical outlier. Road deaths plummeted after the introduction of safety laws. Yes, they have reduced even further in the past 20 years with the introduction of better vehicle safety features, but that doesn't come close to explaining all of it.
I know we're not literally talking about removing the laws for cyclists. Yet, my argument remains: If the fines for cyclists are negligible, they will be disregarded. They may as well be removed.