A Personal Message to Critical Mass.

[Rhythm Thief]

That was partly my point, Mr P. I wasn't born a confident cyclist, when I started pedalling around the Wolverhampton ring road I was a complete novice just like anyone else, hence my point above about just being an ordinary bloke on a bike. It seems - and this extends to the world outside cycling - that we can't simply do something any more, but instead we have to be either told how to do it by a number of expensive books or be part of a campaign group campaigning for better facilities to do whatever it is we'd otherwise be happily doing.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

They are in cars! Have you not seen my sig line?

I'm a driver, a bus passenger, a cyclist, a train passenger, a tube passenger, and a pedestrian, often acting out several of those roles in any one day. Nothing fundamentally changes about the nature of my personhood because of a choice I make about a given mode of transport. No more than it does if I choose a lilac shirt with double cuff and cufflinks, like today, over the dark blue polo shirt I chose to wear yesterday. I don't become one of the not-people because I drive a car.....

as for the late Fr. Illich, he held many a trenchant view that I would agree with, and plenty more I wouldn't, and, I suspect, plenty more still you wouldn't either! But it must be 30 years or more since I read 'Tools for Conviviality'

 

[theclaud]

I'm a driver, a bus passenger, a cyclist, a train passenger, a tube passenger, and a pedestrian, often acting out several of those roles in any one day. Nothing fundamentally changes about the nature of my personhood because of a choice I make about a given mode of transport. No more than it does if I choose a lilac shirt with double cuff and cufflinks, like today, over the dark blue polo shirt I chose to wear yesterday. I don't become one of the not-people because I drive a car.....

as for the late Fr. Illich, he held many a trenchant view that I would agree with, and plenty more I wouldn't, and, I suspect, plenty more still you wouldn't either! But it must be 30 years or more since I read 'Tools for Conviviality'

Probably time to pick it up again, then . It's not about the nature of your personhood - it's about the nature of your mode of transport.

Beyond a critical speed, no one can save time without forcing another to lose it. The man who claims a seat in a faster vehicle insists that his time is worth more than that of the passenger in a slower one. Beyond a certain velocity, passengers become consumers of other people’s time, and accelerating vehicles become the means for effecting a net transfer of life-time. The degree of transfer is measured in quanta of speed. This time grab despoils those who are left behind, and since they are the majority, it raises ethical issues of a more general nature than the lottery that assigns kidney dialysis or organ transplants.
Beyond a certain speed, motorized vehicles create remoteness which they alone can shrink. They create distances for all and shrink them for only a few.

Illich put the critical speed at around 15mph. Dellzeqq has agitated for 20 - but then he does have Dura Ace bearings...

 

[CopperBrompton]

Beyond a critical speed, no one can save time without forcing another to lose it.

What utter tosh.

How does me cycling cause a pedestrian to lose time? How does me driving cause a cyclist to lose time? How does me catching an Intercity train cause a driver to lose time?

 

[theclaud]

What utter tosh.

How does me cycling cause a pedestrian to lose time? How does me driving cause a cyclist to lose time? How does me catching an Intercity train cause a driver to lose time?

After all of nine minutes of thinking! Well I can see that you've considered the matter in some depth...

 

[CopperBrompton]

Well, that argument convinces me. I shall walk everywhere extremely slowly from now on.

 

[theclaud]

Well, that argument convinces me. I shall walk everywhere extremely slowly from now on.

Unless you can walk over 15mph, that's a very silly comment. The threshold is arguable, but you've entirely ignored the first part of the quote you so brusquely rubbished: "beyond a critical speed..."

 

[CopperBrompton]

And the mechanism for me magically causing others to lose time every time I hit the heady speed of 16mph is ... ?

 

[theclaud]

And the mechanism for me magically causing others to lose time every time I hit the heady speed of 16mph is ... ?

I can't pretend I'm not enjoying this...

The order of magnitude in which the critical threshold of speed can be found is too low to be taken seriously by the passenger, and too high to concern the peasant. It is so obvious it cannot be easily seen. The proposal of a limit to speed within this order of magnitude engenders stubborn opposition. It exposes the addiction of industrialized men to ever higher doses of energy, while it asks those who are still sober to abstain from something they have yet to taste.

 

[Dan B]

Forgive me if this is too obvious to be the right answer, but: the faster you are going, the more open space you arrogate to yourself as stopping distance. This makes it proportionately harder for anyone else to e.g. cross the road in front of you.

That said, some cyclists (many of those using the paths in Hyde Park come to mind) are just as guilty of robbing pedestrian time as any driver is.

 

[theclaud]

I like freewheeling down hills.

Me too. But it's not the best time to bring it up. You're in danger of spoiling my fun.

 

[CopperBrompton]

Ah, I see, you were just blindly repeating some words without understanding the argument. As you were, then.

And this industrialised man has gone from higher doses of energy to lower ones, by a fair old margin. On which note, I'm off to the pub. :-)

 

[wafflycat]

CM. There's one twice a day in UK towns and cities. It's called 'The Rush Hour' except that it lasts longer than one hour and most of the participants clogging up the roads are motorised ones. And it's accepted as normal. Yet when cyclists do it once a month in London, it's all about them being anti-social, law-breaking, don't pay road tax.. etc., etc.. (cont. pg 96 Ed.)

 

[theclaud]

Ah, I see, you were just blindly repeating some words without understanding the argument. As you were, then.

And this industrialised man has gone from higher doses of energy to lower ones, by a fair old margin. On which note, I'm off to the pub. :-)

Not at all. I just can't improve on the prose, and the appropriateness of it appealed to me. Coruskate's point is part of it, except that the arrogation of space goes way beyond stopping distances, and that of time way beyond the immediate interaction of fast- and slow-moving modes of transport.

 

[theclaud]

Anyway, Wafflycat puts it pretty well...