Bullets don't shoot people. So why do cars 'kill' cyclists?
roadragers.netlify.appThe premise is false. Headlines or descriptions of events like *"Three innocent bystanders were hit when a spray of bullets burst through the door, killing 1 and injuring the other 2".
So... Bullet anthropomorphizing is also a thing.
What was anthropomorphized in that sentence? Inanimate objects can burst through things and kill people.
I used the phrasing the article author was objecting to for cars. It anthropomorphized to the same extent as what the author is complaining about. So, I suppose you could collapse the thing either way- bullets are often anthropomorphized just as much as cars, or your direction which I'd agree with- there isn't much anthropomorphizing to begin with in either of them.
Police and news media reflexively defend drivers to the point where the language they use is laughable if you aren't of that mindset. Nonsense phrases like "intentional accident" and similar variations are common.
Accident is a nice euphemism for when kids pee their pants, don't use it for when adults crash their cars. The gun community has excised "accidental discharge" from their vocabulary and replaced it with the more accurate "negligent discharge," lets do the same for drivers.
The implied analogy is limited.
Anti-gun folks argue that since so many people die as a result of handguns, they should be banned. But despite the fact that in car/bicycle crashes the cyclist inevitably gets the worst of it, no one is seriously calling for the elimination of automobiles.
> no one is seriously calling for the elimination of automobiles.
I think it is because they see cars as much more necessary than guns. IMO The reality is that both could benefit from more regulations and harsher penalties and enforcement.
There are serious movements calling for the elimination or heavy restriction of automobiles in places with cyclists and pedestrians.
Paris' "School Streets" are an effective and widely written about implementation, but most modern cities have some concept of car-free street and a few examples, even if it's not widespread.
If you've ever spent time in a city area that has these car bans/restrictions in place. It's fantastic.
A lot of these style of reframings seem to completely lack a theory behind them, as if reframing things will magically solve a problem. In this case, further vilifying or antagonizing drivers will do absolutely nothing to increase road safety. How would it? These memes won't reach the majority of drivers. Those it does, rather than feeling mollified, will feel accused, and hence will be more likely to drive recklessly around cyclists.
A reframing that would have the power to lower collisions between cars and bikes would be to blame the road design, or even the car design. These are things that can be easily changed for a large number of people if enough political will exists.
Road and car design are an important part of the problem, but so is car culture, which is all in the head.
It's the same kind of weasel journalism as "officer-involved shootings".
Mistakes were made.
Wrong, biased obligatory training courses were had.
This is a really enormous stretch.