I think the consequences of the injustices are highly asymmetric and that skews people's sense of what is right and wrong.
Cyclists tend to pay with their bodies or their lives when something goes wrong in the street. Drivers -- at least when cyclists are involved -- do not. And often they do not get prosecuted at all. Please read the article linked, it has several examples. I can find plenty more if you like.
If a driver suffers a 30 second delay when a cyclist does something stupid but a cyclist suffers death when a driver does something stupid it's not entirely unreasonable to discount the injustice that drivers suffer at the hands of cyclists.
Furthermore you allude to "sidewalks" as something that cyclists can do wrong. I disagree. Few states have laws prohibiting sidewalk riding though some cities have passed laws against it.
I couldn't agree more that the best protection a driver has is a dashcam. Just the threat to the other party (driver, cyclist, pedestrian) that such a thing exists might well convince them to not pursue a frivolous claim.
I'm well aware of cases like the recent CA Sheriff's Deputy, and think it would be appropriate to charge him with manslaughter.
I agreed with the rest of your comment, just thought that specific passage was starting to preach past.
My original point is that a police bias against bikers doesn't refute that in a different situation, a driver may be incorrectly civilly blamed for an accident. Let's say a biker comes around a corner on the wrong side of the road, the oncoming car manages to stop, yet the biker then hits the hood and unluckily dies. The biker is clearly responsible for this, yet if the driver's insurance pays out a $100k wrongful settlement, nobody is going to feel bad for them.
Also it's quite possible that "responsible for" was meant in the moral sense of controlling a ton of steel - that's what we want people to do, right?
I was referencing "sidewalks" still in the context of cars - a biker coming into an intersection from the sidewalk at speed is an unsafe menace.
Honestly reflecting on this thread, I bet this would be a ripe topic for researching degenerate us-vs-them politics.
Cyclists tend to pay with their bodies or their lives when something goes wrong in the street. Drivers -- at least when cyclists are involved -- do not. And often they do not get prosecuted at all. Please read the article linked, it has several examples. I can find plenty more if you like.
If a driver suffers a 30 second delay when a cyclist does something stupid but a cyclist suffers death when a driver does something stupid it's not entirely unreasonable to discount the injustice that drivers suffer at the hands of cyclists.
Furthermore you allude to "sidewalks" as something that cyclists can do wrong. I disagree. Few states have laws prohibiting sidewalk riding though some cities have passed laws against it.
http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2013/08/legal-to-ride-...
I couldn't agree more that the best protection a driver has is a dashcam. Just the threat to the other party (driver, cyclist, pedestrian) that such a thing exists might well convince them to not pursue a frivolous claim.