A bit of reason in the WaPo

[dplasters]

A good article. I’m not holding my breath for a serious talk to actually take place though.

The comments section should be interesting….

[PotomacCyclist]

Interesting.

And yet, we tend not to treat lead-footed drivers with the same disapproval as cyclists who ride through stop signs, even though the former behavior is potentially more publicly harmful than the latter. Which raises another question: Are cyclists really more prolific scofflaws than drivers anyway?

I’d say the harm from scofflaw driving is definitely more harmful than scofflaw cycling. The case of the Baltimore bishop is a prime example of this. 33,000 people killed by car drivers a year in the U.S., vs. about 5 killed by cyclists. Which is the bigger threat? (The absolute numbers are the most important, but even if you look at percentages or crashes per trip, the drivers are still far deadlier. Even if you accept that a certain percentage of the victims are largely to blame for their deaths.)

These articles are helpful, but as with Courtland Milloy, I don’t expect big changes in attitude among some of the traditionalists with hardened attitudes. Milloy may have changed slightly, but sort of like going from an F to a D-. Younger generations may have a different mindset, although many younger adults still hold onto car-only/car-first attidues about transportation. At least the Post continues to show that they are more than just Milloy’s mouthpiece. So I’ll say that this article is a moderately good thing, even if the comments are probably filled with a bunch of fact-ignoring rants.

[jabberwocky]

@dplasters 104507 wrote:

The comments section should be interesting….

The best thing about browsing the post with javascript blocked… the comments don’t load.

[PotomacCyclist]

I wonder if they will ever follow WJLA’s lead:

http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/07/why-we-turned-off-comments-on-wjla-com-91861.html

I guess the comments section brings in a lot of extra page views/clicks. But I’ve noticed that the NY Times only allows comments on selected articles these days. Maybe the Post will follow that example.

[mstone]

Yeah, comments have turned out to be a bad idea in general.

[dplasters]

@jabberwocky 104522 wrote:

The best thing about browsing the post with javascript blocked… the comments don’t load.

I purposefully read them on certain articles (I do not respond). I generally find the internet as serious business to be pretty funny. People get worked up over such odd things.

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