Vail man reminds us of life’s dangers, urges everyone to stay inside forever
Martha R sent me this from today’s AZ Daily Star:
Re: the June 10 article “Man faces additional charges in cyclist death.”
Having a stroke or some other medical impairment, a tire blowout, equipment failure, are all potential causes for a driver accidentally killing a cyclist riding on the shoulder of a road.
Every person who chooses to exercise or train for competition via roadside biking (and that would constitute the lion’s share of all roadside cyclists) needs to recognize that there is ever-present danger, even when all parties are abiding by the rules of the road. I personally find it illogical to take on such a risk when the same goals may be accomplished in safer environments.
What of the lives affected and possibly ruined by the accidental taking of a human life? Given current road conditions and laws governing these matters, roadside cycling seems selfish.
John M. Towle
Self-employed, Vail
Of course, the incident Mr. Towle is referring to is the Drake Okusako case, where a young driver, probably intoxicated. veered into the bike lane and killed Mr. Okusako.
June 18th, 2009 at 11:20 am
So doing anything that possibly could expose one to risks is automatically selfish?
Like joining the Marines, police or fire department?
Undergoing any type of surgery to improve one’s quality of life?
Give me a break.
Yeah, I can understand if your wife stresses out because of my skydiving hobby, but cycling is far from the death sentence Mr. Towle makes it out to be.
I’m pretty sure if you have a stroke while driving, you could end up dead too.
June 18th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Taking this argument to its logical conclusion, the exact same thing could be said of driving a car.
Driving a car you are at risk from a variety of mechanical problems, other drivers and road conditions. Safer ways to get around exist, public transport for example.
June 18th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
He can’t legally get bikes off the roads as vehicles but he’s trying the “too dangerous” card. Using the same logic the cars are what is causing the danger, so logically the thing to get rid of is the cars. No cars, then nobody will get killed by cars. The corollary to his argument would be women are raped by men, so therefore women should stay indoors away from men. Last time I mentioned this to my wife she said “And what planet are you living on?”
June 19th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
[...] drive among us — this is so wrong in so many ways Courtesy of the Tucson Bike Lawyer comes this letter to the editor, from a writer in Vail — no, not that one, the other one: Re: the June 10 article “Man faces [...]
June 20th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
“Every person who chooses to exercise or train for competition via roadside biking”
Phew, I feel better now that I know I’m not being selfish by riding my bike for transportation.
June 20th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
It seems nobody here has understood what John is doing; He is saying this is how I see the situation, and this is what I think. Would anybody be willing to engage him in dialogue before attacking him with nonsense and pro-bike bias?
John M. Towle is not telling anybody what to do. He stated that “Given current road conditions and laws governing these matters, roadside cycling seems selfish.” the key word here is ’seems’, he did not say ‘is’, and he did not say taking the risk was selfish. I hate to bring this to your attention Mickey, but your comments make no sense.
Opus, your statements came out of thin air; learn to read.
His statements were logical, and he did not say he was against cycling or that he wanted them off the road.
Adrien, your math adds up but your statement is unnecessary; I’m sure John will agree as he sounds like a reasonable man.
Ed, you hurt your own credibility by using another person’s words improperly out of context.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
The statement was it was too dangerous to exercise around cars. Cars are the problem, get rid of the cars and you get rid of the problem. Nobody in cars is getting killed by runners or cyclists, but vice versa is not true. Like I said, the corollary with men and women would be restrictions on women because some men are rapists v restrictions on men because some men are rapists. I was arguing by analogy and reducio ad absurdum (sp? my spell checker barfs all over Latin)
June 20th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
John stated (quoted from above): “Every person who chooses to exercise or train for competition via roadside biking… needs to recognize that there is ever-present danger, even when all parties are abiding by the rules of the road.” Where does he say cars are the problem?
Reductio ad absurdum: A reduction to an absurdity; the refutation of a proposition by demonstrating the inevitably absurd conclusion to which it would logically lead.
Show me how John’s logic leads to an absurd conclusion.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Well, OK then:
Mr. Towle’s driving his vehicle
everywhere seems selfish to cyclists.
We can take subjective potshots at each
other all day long and end up nowhere.
Everyone is biased and Mr. Towle’s
view is skewed from inside his steel
cocoon.
If we can agree on factors of comparison
of those who use the road, then a
determination of selfishness against a
given perspective can be made.
I think we find it bothersome that
Mr. Towle uses ’safe’ and ‘risk’
in his process of logic. Maybe he
watches a lot of Oprah.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Coghauler, I read no bias, or indications of a skewed view, in what John wrote; Will you point out any comments that you read as such?
Individuals do not make subjective assessments of safety or risk; I’d say John made no error including reasonable terms (such as ’safer’ or ‘risk’) in stating his perspective as he is evaluating the progress of the negotiation of ‘what is safe’ or ‘what are fair levels of risk’ by the consensus.
I am not confused about what John says seems selfish, and I am not confused about how he came to say this. He did not take a ’subjective potshot’ at anybody as far as I can tell; will you point out for me where he did?
June 20th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Granted we take Mr. Towle’s view as one
of a motorist. The statements in his
letter viewed separately are truisms.
The phrase that matters in this blog
is, “roadside cycling seems selfish”.
He doesn’t say that it is, but this
audience takes it that he believes
that it is. Mr. Towle also confines
his statements to exercise and training
uses which may bolster his safety and
risk view but is off the point when
referring his letter to Drake Okusako.
Mr. Okusako’s use of the road was no
different than any motorist’s.
However, people do make subjective
assessments of safety as you did in a
previous thread about which streets were
safe for cyclists. Inroducing these terms
of perspective (safe, risk, fair) without
comparative factors is, I think, an error
in logic and when Mr. Towle does so, illustrates
his skewed view.
I would like to thank you, Tony, for making
this letter more interesting than at first
glance. I don’t feel the need to parse it
further.
June 20th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
I seem to recall a statistic that the rate of fatalities per 100,000 hours of activity on a bike was 0.33. Comparatively, the estimated risk of fatality of living(!) was 1.50. I wish I could find that website.
Also, why do you believe that the driver was intoxicated in the recent collision? I don’t think there were any reports of that.
June 21st, 2009 at 10:49 am
Coghauler, seriously, do you comprehend anything you read? It seems necessary to parse what John has written, as long as you continue to misinterpret it. I understand you have an agenda, but it is s bit irritating that you don’t let it rest.
June 21st, 2009 at 11:09 am
Yeah but Tony, do you read anything you comprehend? Mr. Towle’s letter is not that difficult of a text, actually, to pin down — but we can always make any text just as difficult as we choose. The only important question in any analysis/hermeneutics is what point you want to end the analysis and move on. Any good deconstructionist could write a treatise on the sentence “The cat is on the branch.” But would it be interesting? Or useful?
Mr. Towle took the occasion of Mr. Okusako’s death to inform the readers of the AZ Star’s letter’s page of his (Towle’s) opinion that riding a bicycle alongside a roadway is a selfish act, because events mainly out of the control of a motorist could possibly lead to the death or injury of the cyclist. The motorist might become the unwilling agent of a cyclist’s death, and then have to carry that emotional burden forever.
It’s not a big step to conclude that his point is that people should not ride bikes on roads, in order to protect the emotional health of motorists.
I think what readers here are pointing out is that his reasoning does not lead where he says or thinks it does, and is probably specious anyway. (My own comment on the letter, that he was urging us to stay at home forever, was a comment on the speciousness.) There is selfishness involved, for sure, the readers above are saying, but he harbors it himself. He wants the road to be reserved for motorists alone.
And I believe it probably is not a genuine concern for the lives of cyclists that leads him there. It probably is his anger at being slowed down from time to time by cyclists.
That theory, admittedly, is not found in the text itself, but in the text’s cultural/historical/textual/social surroundings — its context. Like Coghauler, I’m inclined to stop there, but if you or someone can make the text interesting or useful beyond that point, be my guest.
EBR
June 21st, 2009 at 11:13 am
Oh I forgot. Mr. Towle’s use of Drake’s death to make the point he pretends to be making is itself an act of such bad manners that the logical problems dissolve away as unimportant, in my mind. It’s bad enough to blame the victim, but worse still–and self serving to an appalling degree–to blame the victim for something that didn’t even happen.
More than anything else, that’s why I highlighted it on my Website.
EBR
June 21st, 2009 at 1:30 pm
So, John did not say people should not ride bikes on roads, but people are saying he has.
John did not say he is angry at being slowed down from time to time by cyclists, but people are saying that he is.
I did not find his comment to be specious, but I guess I’m alone in that way.
John’s comment was not designed to blame anybody for anything, if it was he would have written something to the effect, like ‘I blame…’ which he did not; I guess if somebody says something that makes sense, but is unpopular to cyclists, they open themselves up to all sorts of abuse by bike-fanatics.
I’m not trying to make this comment especially interesting; I’m curious about how the readers of this blog have become so jaded.
June 21st, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Keep in mind that the letter was lead-into with standard Arizona Daily Star Letter-to-the-editor boilerplate:
Re: the June 10 article “Man faces additional charges in cyclist death.”
Thing is, the letter was not relevant to what we know: the cyclist had every right to be on the road and the motorist is facing additional (criminal) charges for the death of the cyclist.
Why did ADS publish an irrelevant letter? Of course cycling is risky. So is staying home all day in bed or whatever. We all know, sense, risk. duh. Why did ADS publish an irrelevant letter? What’s their motive?
Will Towle write a “Memorandum to the Court” that hears the accused’s case? If not, why not–after all, in for a penny in for a pound, right? Will the court even consider it?
And will Tony’s tedious and sophomoric struggle to clean up after Towle and some others above bear fruit?
June 21st, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Thanks, Red Star, for not being mean or calling names. Are you trying to make a point?
June 21st, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Just raising questions Tony, just raising questions…
June 21st, 2009 at 8:20 pm
oops! make that “tony,” not “Tony.”
Sorry.
June 21st, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Erik — I, too, am interested in where the “probably intoxicated” came from. ??
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:32 am
Mr. Towle asserts that the “lion’s share” of “roadside cyclists” are exercising or training for “competition.” If pressed, he will be unable to lend any support to this claim.
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:33 am
Eric,
I hate to beat a dead horse, but what about the intoxication comment?