Originally Posted by berner

don't know what to do about harassment but there are some good suggestion from CB HI…

There was a sense of community which is lacking in many places today so there is little connection to others. The frenetic pace of our society leaves little time or inclination to build those connections and the situation seems to be getting worst.

Several years ago I read an article in which psychologists or ethnologists created situations for experimental animals where they were put under pressure of over-crowding and or limited food supply. What they found was that pressure produced aggression and fighting in those animals with and mistreatment of their own young.

Human animals react in just the same way. We can find, weekly, news reports where a parent has killed their own child so these are not isolated incidents. We can find, almost daily, reports a pointless mass shootings. The aggression we may experience as cyclists is a further expression of that pressure.

I live in a small town where there are still many common links so I don't experience harassment. I have in the past lived in a very busy area where I liked the work but not the environment in that part of the world. My solution was to move to a small town.

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

Besides sitting in front of TV sets and computers, an ultimate sedentary activity is sitting restrained in a car.

I once attended a lecture by a noted psychiatrist that in animal studies, the most potent stressor is restraint. For humans, being in a car is probably the most common occurrence of restraint, not just by a seatbelt, but because you cannot leave a car while moving, particularly on a freeway.

While driving itself may not be that stressful, it’s easy to see that the stress of driving in hazardous conditions may be amplified, because there is no escape.

Furthermore in my experience, the most uncomfortable time on the road is being stuck in traffic, where there is no danger, but unrelenting immobilization. So if stress (specifically distress) is inimical to good health, driving is an added risk exposure, as if we didn’t know that