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activistPnk

@activistPnk@slrpnk.net

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How to diplomatically handle car drivers who use their horns to demand cyclists make room for them

In this case I operate on the assumption car drivers are inherently good people. So when I am cycling in the middle of the lane (when the lane is too narrow for safe sharing), and they are behind me hitting their horn, I give them the benefit of the doubt as to whether they are being a malicious prick....

activistPnk OP , (edited )

So let me get this straight. Instead of just moving to the side of the road and letting the car pass., you just do a full stop in the middle of the road, thus creating an unsafe situation?

You have a strange idea of safety. Traffic that is stopped is not unsafe. Or are you thinking that it would be holding up an ambulance or something? This 15 seconds of activism would not be carried out if there were an ambulance in the same direction of travel. I cycle without headphones so I can hear emergency vehicles.

Road safety in my region is organised this way: cyclists are entitled to 1 meter clearance of cars. That also includes parked cars because people open doors. So if civil engineers decide to designate part of the road for parking (instead of a cycling lane), then they have prioritized car parking above bandwidth. Cyclists can safely distance themselves 1 meter from the parked cars to avoid that door opening. Moving cars are legally required give cyclists another meter of clearance when passing, because shit happens and cyclists need enough buffer to dodge potholes and unplanned swerves. To give up that buffer is to create an unsafe situation, especially if the driver is in a hurry. The more aggressive a car driver is, the more risk you create by letting them pass. Passing is statistically correllated with accidents.

If car drivers want to move along faster, they should lobby to have parking lanes replaced with cycling lanes. When there is a cycling lane, the 1 meter clearance by moving cars is not legally required.

Don’t fuck with cars, one day somebody is not gonna stop.

I appreciate your genuine concern for my safety. As an activist, I’m perpetually up to my neck in trouble and I accept the risks.

activistPnk OP , (edited )

This actually happened to me: I arrived at my destination and discovered my load was loose, ready to fall. There have also been times that I dropped something. And times that my backpack was mistakenly unzipped and I could have lost something worth keeping.

So if I operate with your assumption (that honking drivers are always assholes), then I lose the opportunity to pick up something I dropped or correct insecure cargo. Why should I give that up?

Since a horn is an ambiguous signal, in this circumstance of a car following a cyclist it should come to be universally understood to mean a cyclist dropped their phone or wallet, as this is the legit scenario.

activistPnk OP , (edited )

My flimsy cable lock fell apart. So I needed a new lock. The common choices are a U-lock or a chain. I opted for a chain with a heavy integrated lock at one end. This chain could double as a self-defense tool. I wonder which martial art would bring the most utility to this kind of tool.

The chain is big enough that it’s partially falling out of my backpack. It could now actually be something that inspires honking on the basis that it could fall out.

activistPnk ,

I saw no actions on that page. Then I dragged my cursor across the page and highlighting revealed they are using white text on a white background. I guess they did not consider that environmentalists might have images disabled in their browser.

Support Farmers and A More Resilient Food System

They are quite vague. One of the problems is livestock farmers are getting subsidies. They should be getting less support, not more. It’s unclear if this 2024 Farm Bill separates livestock farmers from the others.

Tell the World Bank to Stop Funding Fossil Fuels

Agreed. Though it’s a shame the action stops there. The advice should be to use cash as much as possible and to avoid these banks in particular.

activistPnk OP , (edited )

What other options are you talking about? I think the aloe was Aloe King by OKF and Arizona is the name of the iced tea maker. Neither have ties to Coca Cola AFAIK.

activistPnk ,

It cannot work in the US; but it’s also useless under US rules. That is, it is already illegal nationwide for anyone other than USPS to feed your official US Mail postbox. Some people hate the fact that this gives USPS monopoly power because UPS and FedEx also cannot put anything in your mailbox. But the upside is US mailboxes don’t get junked up by a leafletter.

So in the US, the only legal way for mail to enter your postbox is at the hands of USPS, which IIUC means only mail that is addressed to your address because I don’t think USPS delivers unaddressed material unless it’s actually from USPS. That also means junk mailers must pay postage. If the local pizza shop stuffs flyers in your mailbox, it’s criminal and actionable.

The “no marketing” tags that people put on mailboxes outside the US (e.g. Europe) is to cover situations where anyone can junk up your mailbox. Then the signage means (in effect) “no mail that is unaddressed”.

Of course junk /can/ be addressed to you specifically (inside and outside the US), but you wouldn’t want the postal worker making guesses about whether it’s junk, would you? So I think that’s always delivered.

activistPnk ,

Probably depends on the country

Exactly. No one is mentioning their country but it makes all the difference in the world.

In Switzerland, people must subscribe if they want a junk-free mailbox which costs them the equivalent of $/€ 30/year. I don’t suppose anyone is enthusiastic about paying that heafty fee, but the upside is that it works. If someone puts junk in your Swiss mailbox, it’s strictly enforced. The perp gets a fine, which I don’t recall if any of that goes toward compensating the victim.

In Belgium, it’s free to put a sticker on your mailbox. And it’s illegal for people to junk up your mailbox if you have the sticker. But it’s unenforced. So the level of junk mail drops a little with the sticker, but it never stops the flow of junk completely because everyone knows it’s unenforced.

activistPnk ,

Hmm.. that reminds me, there may be something w.r.t. direct marketing. Marketers have to get your address and pay postage to junk mail you in the US. That only deters the most reckless marketing efforts. For some ad companies it is worth the postage cost. So then they have to get your address, which means buying your address from a data broker. You can probably pay a fee to get removed from some databases that feed junk mailers.

Data protection is mostly non-existent in the US. So there are countless data brokers that are happy to sell you a removal service. Some data brokers will even remove your records at no cost. But the number of data brokers would require you to quit your job in order to have time to make all the removal requests and constantly monitor new data brokers. So there are services that remove your records from a bulk number of data brokers, for a fee. I think it’s normal that they want your SSN because that’s the primary key for everything. But yeah, it’s a double-edged sword because you have to trust the cleaning company with your SSN and you can’t really know if that SSN just ends up enriching the records of some of the more black market data brokers.

activistPnk ,

My counter attack: I save all the junk flyers over the span of ~4 years or so. Then at election time when the campaign flyers are junking up my box, I find the address of politician whose campaign flyer made it into my mailbox, and I stuff the past 4 years of junk accumulation into their mailbox all at once.

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