Oh man, look what you made me do. I had to get out my laptop to respond.
Nobody is setting a false equivalence. You asked why someone would do this, and as I understood the answer, it was that people are sometimes simply jerks.
It is a false equivalence because with your comments you're equating two very different things in terms of danger, intent, and impact. Having your ass grabbed against your wishes is certainly not a good thing, but it's different than going through an attempted rape. Equating the rapist with an ass-grabbing woman is a false equivalency.
Well, I had to look up "
false equivalence" to make sure I'm not losing my mind. Wikipedia states that "False equivalence is a common result when an anecdotal similarity is pointed out as
equal." Also check out the examples, which use words like "no different". I'm not saying, and never said, that a truck driver endangering a cyclist is
the same, equal to, or no different from a cyclist endangering a pedestrian. You are arguing against a
strawman fallacy because I am not equating the danger or ultimate effect these attacks. What I am saying is that the
motivations are similar when you give power to a jerk. You can disagree with that opinion, but it's not strictly a false equivalence.
Maybe there's a different phrase to mean what you accusing me of, something like dismissing your trauma (which was not my intent). But if you must stick to your definition of false equivalence, you sir have stepped in it. Because you then say:
What if this thread was about a woman who was knocked to the ground by a rapist, but managed to fight him off and get away? She's trying to make sense of the attack.
Then people come into the thread and say, "That rapist was a sociopath jerk. I was walking in a crowd once and a woman touched my ass. Women are sociopath jerks too!"
Seems to me like an actual rape survivor might take offense that you are equating two very dissimilar things: A false equivalence between truck violence and bicycle violence, and a false equivalence between attempted rape and butt touching. These are not similar comparisons. In my cyclist attack example, I was violently pushed by a cyclist with superior height, weight and momentum. I was in immediate apprehension for my safety, and if he was seen/caught by a nearby officer he would have gone to jail. If you want to dismiss my own trauma from this assault, then perhaps you are not quite the pinnacle of empathy that you wish to see in others.
In comparison, a woman touching a man's butt in public, while wrong, is very low on the priority list of society and police. So my person anecdote is far more similar to your experience than is a butt-touching woman to a forcible rape. In other words, these purported false-equivalencies are not equivalent.
I'm sorry that you were bumped in a crosswalk by a cyclist who shouldn't be riding on the sidewalk. But riding a bicycle on the sidewalk too close to another person is not at all the same as swerving towards and brake checking a cyclist on the road with a truck. It's not the same in terms of danger, intent, or impact.
Maybe you missed the part where I was more than "bumped." This was definitely a malicious attack. I agree that your experience bore a higher risk of death, but that doesn't prove that someone trying to hurt me won't have a similar motive.
That said, I’m curious if your numbers are adjusted for the prevalence of cycling (pedestrian deaths per passenger mile in that mode of transportation).
To the best of my knowledge no such study exists. Determining the number of miles cycled/walked on average is fraught with peril due to under-reporting. By it's nature, such a study has to be made up largely of guesses.
Sure, but my point is that you can't compare raw vehicle-pedestrian deaths to raw cyclist-pedestrian deaths and call it good. You cite a bunch of articles/statistics implying that they show the entire story, but at the end of the day, your assertion that the risk is comparatively minuscule (on a per-passeger mile basis) is just a guess. Here's a statistic: About 610,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year. Does that mean it's cool to say that the 15,000 car-on-cyclist/ped accidents are "just not comparable. You're talking orders of magnitudes of difference?" No, all these things suck, and we should work to reduce all deaths.
And yes, I have personally seen cyclists assault pedestrians, myself included for doing no more than doing pedestrian things.
I guess that's the problem with anecdotes. We all have different ones. I have personally never seen a cyclist stop his bicycle to assault a pedestrian for doing no more than "pedestrian things" (walking?). I've never seen a cyclist who had spent money to modify his bicycle purely with the intent to assault pedestrians.
Where do you live, that this is a regular occurrence? Can you describe exactly what happened in the incident you mentioned?
The vast majority of pedestrian/cyclist/motorist altercations that I've seen there is an explanation for behaviour. It might be a poor explanation (maybe a car didn't want to slow down to let a pedestrian cross at a cross-walk, maybe a cyclist was swerving through masses of people on a sidewalk to go faster, maybe a pedestrian was walking in the bike lane while trying to read messages on his phone) but there is typically a reason for the behaviour. The truck driver's behaviour doesn't fit into those categories. I wasn't impeding his ability to go quickly, wasn't blocking his lane, wasn't doing anything at all that would impact his life. That's quite unusual in my experience. I've never seen similar behaviour from a cyclist or pedestrian.
In my personal case, I was walking across a signal-controlled crosswalk with a bunch of other people in a crowded city (SF). I guess the guy had an "explanation" in that he didn't want to wait for the light or dismount his bike. But that doesn't explain why he shoved people instead of just going around them, except that he was a jerk. Shoving me probably too more time and effort than just going around, so it wasn't about speed. Maybe he was just angry that he couldn't do whatever he wanted. The truck driver could have an equally ridiculous reason: you were impeding his ability to drive in the shoulder. Your presence was stopping him from doing whatever he wanted to do and it pissed him off. We can only speculate, but that's why I just prefer to consider both guys jerks.
Is this common here? I have seen a number of altercations during critical mass. Most, admittedly, are with vehicles, but that doesn't make pedestrians immune. It's a bit ironic that critical mass tends not to give a shit about the pedestrians they run roughshod over, given the intent of the movement. I'm not the only one... here's a quick result I found (
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Critical-Mass-and-pedestrians-3105406.php)
I’m not saying all cyclists are jerks any more than all car drivers are jerks. But what MAKES car drivers jerks? Probably the same thing that makes cyclists jerks or pedestrians kick dogs. The additional power differential enables this jerkers. I really doubt the cyclist who violently pushed me would have done so if he was on foot and I had a chance to fight back
If you get into an accident with a pedestrian while you're riding your bike, there's a good chance that you'll get hurt. If you get into an accident with a pedestrian or a bike while driving your car, there's almost no chance that you'll get hurt. In addition, it's harder for a motorist to be caught for misbehavior. That's why there are so many hit and run incidents.
If I were to take a stab at it, I suspect that automobile drivers are more often jerks because they know that they are protected by their vehicles. I've never had another bicycle swerve in front of me and brake check me . . . but I have had automobiles do this (both while on my bike, and while driving).
In addition to this protection, a vehicle is a virtual guarantee of anonymity. It's hard to see a driver behind the tinted glass in a car. The driver doesn't need to look their victim in the eye, so it's easier to dehumanize others. This extends well beyond bikes to the way that vehicles interact with pedestrians and other vehicles too. It is common to see rude behavior on a highway from people who would never dream of acting in the same way if they were walking on a sidewalk. I think that this contributes to the more extreme behaviour that is more common from motorists than pedestrians or cyclists.
Sure, car drivers are less vulnerable and therefore feel more empowered. But does that car really make them a jerk? I take back what I said earlier, these people are already jerks. What makes them
act like jerks is having more power.