Road design, safety and Vision Zero

[danbrotherston]

On the second paragraph...they were not stopped for weeks, nor days, nor even hours...it was all of a few minutes. But even if it was hours, this kind of thing happens all the time with car crashes. If they did block it for hours (never mind days or weeks) and drivers somehow miraculously did not choose to just murder a couple dozen cyclists instead of be delayed, they would have been able to turn around and reverse out, as would happen if there was a crash closing a road for an extended period.

Honestly...I don't know what to make of this paragraph, to me it sounds like fear mongering claiming people were "imprisoned". the only thing they were imprisoned by are their cars.

[…]

I’m not going to reply to everything because I don’t have time right now. You do make a lot of good points, especially about where violence actually comes from in many protest situations. I would mostly say that overall I’m expressing an attitude, and I don’t know the details. For example, you indicate it was only for a few minutes. That puts a completely different spin on the whole situation. So to ascribe excessively precise motives or conclusions to me isn’t really accurate. I’m certainly not fear mongering, just saying that if the protest completely closes the exit from an area that people are trapped.

I did want to make one specific point: You might want to consider if you’re now making an ableist assumption; for some people who are driving, if their vehicle is immobilized they’re pretty much immobilized too. And even for others, if ones vehicle is trapped then one is pretty much trapped nearby, because it’s not really feasible to leave the vehicle behind; one won’t know when to come back and pick it up as the protest is ending and the police will be forced to tow it, leading to large impound fees.

Also, pointing out that car crashes can have a similar result isn’t really on point. Just because bad things sometimes happen doesn’t mean that anybody is justified in making sure those bad things happen.

My point was tongue and cheek, speaking generally to the car dependency that many people are trapped in, not literally suggesting that everyone just get out and leave their cars.

Regardless, the vehicles were not immobilised. If the intersection was closed long term, vehicles could be reversed out. Nobody is trapped any more than they would be trapped in any traffic jam. The only reason they did not move is because it was only closed for a short duration.

When talking about a crash on the 401 nobody ever describes it as "hundreds of people imprisoned" (though that's the way it may feel when I am driving there) even though it is exactly the same situation. That's why I call it fear mongering, which is maybe not the right term, but the point is, you wouldn't describe the same situation that way if caused by a crash instead of a protest.