mikesbytes wrote:What it does is entrench the fear of being hit by a car if you cycle and the fear of being hit by a car is a major and possibly the main reason others don't take up cycling
I did that once in Surin, Thailand, trying to park a 4x4 dual-cab Hilux straight, and there was a small alley off the street right next to the bay I found. Just as I reversed back a few metres (much more slowly than the SUV pictured) to get in close to the kerb, a young girl on a little motorbike rode down the alley and stopped right behind the raised 4x4, and I did not see her, but heard the crunch as my RHR wheel rolled over her bike's back wheel. Luckily she was not hurt, oh but I remember watching the poor girl ride off after making my sincere apologies with a wonky back wheel. I am so ashamed but nothing short of a rear-view camera would have stopped this unfortunate Accident, in the true sense of the word. That SUV in the photo reversed much too fast, unless the footage is sped up.
I am lucky that she didn't call her brothers to come over and punish me for it, even though it was in no way intentional, and I still can't think of how I could have avoided it because her head was below the height of the tailgate, making her invisible to the driver. It goes without saying that my entourage and I left for Mukdahan province as soon as the young lady wobbled off down the road on her wonky wheeled motorbike, poor thing. Oh I am so ashamed.
Back on topic, what might be in part the cause of the misunderstandings between cyclists and car drivers is that riding a bike in the city is a very dangerous activity, and so when I am on the bike, I am ten times more alert and anxious than when I get behind the wheel of my brand-new, second-hand Big Truck. This is much like the comfortable feeling of driving a car. It is not so blatantly dangerous as riding a bike, and this is why on the bike, my mind is much more engrossed in
survival mode than in the car or the truck. It is sometimes in the
survival mindset appropriate to behave in a manner which maybe hard for a car driver to understand if they don't cycle too.
The reason that the cyclist is mentally inclined towards the
survival mode is purely because of the danger imposed by the presence of heavy metal vehicles, but the media is a political tool and the majority of voters drive heavy metal vehicles, so it would be of no use to the majority for the media to support the views of a minority like us. There is no money minorities unless they're in fashion, and cyclists are gaining slowly, but not anywhere near as popular as some of the usual fashionable set. We don't attract the same sympathy as the YKWs.