Originally Posted by
Happy Feet
Says you - from your perspective... But not everyone comes at things from the same life experience. I guess at 55 I've just learned that about people.
I also noted that riding a bike seems pretty simple to me because I've done it all my life so such a course seems basic but I also talk to lots of other people who struggle with wrapping their heads around the concept. When I ride my bike to work in the rain some people simply don't understand how that is possible without looking like a drowned rat. So I explain how fenders and boots and rain capes work. Even when we look at fenders there is a lot to learn about good design and crappy design. Why look negatively on a program that offers to help them? I can tell each person individually or a bunch of them collectively. It's a positive thing. If my employer (700 staff) wanted to implement a bike friendly program and asked me to facilitate it I would gladly do so. I wouldn't look down my nose at how lame they must be for not figuring it out themselves.
Other supposed irrelevant courses:
Cooking , art, guitar, mechanics, welding, pottery, writing... all of those activities will have people in them who basically just picked up the material and learned by doing instead of formal education so the courses must be unnecessary.
To compare. I learned to drive by working on a prairie farm at 15. I basically spent 12-14 hours a day going around in circles in a field and back and forth on gravel roads. My learner vehicles were a 1Ton Ford 4speed and a 4640 John Deere tractor and, other than a cursory "what to push and pull", no one taught me anything. However, these days we have enrolled all our kids in driver education courses complete with defensive driving modules and road lessons. I don't regret that at all. To me it s money well spent if it pays off in them being better/safer drivers.
If someone needs to take a course to become car free/lite and it results in them doing so what's the downside exactly?
Lovely post.
As further explanation, I suffered a serious head injury in a farming workplace accident. This was with a piece of mechanical machinery within a fairly slope cherry orchard with anti-bird netting that I was checking.
After my admission to hospital, based on a medical observation, my driver licence was forced to be hand over to the authorities until some judgment enables its return eventually. The accident, on 22 March, did not involve anything to do with driving, and it is, as I found found, unlikely that it will be returned to me until December of next January. This is despite me holding a licence unchallenged for over 45 years.
I have had to rely on both Machka and my day carer for access to and back from the hospital and other activities in their vehicles because I also had been deeply advised medically to avoid riding any of my bikes on roads. In the past few months, that hasn't stopped me from riding on Hobart's best bike path facility, gradually increasing distance as my fitness and riding skills have improved (and bearing in mind that I have ridden bike for over 20 years, over half of that while car free).
And next weekend will be a new development, despite the concern of some of my treaters, in that Machka and I will be riding our bikes on sections of Northern Tasmanian roads we have enjoyed in the past because of their relatively light motor vehicle presences.
While it is simple for some people to think they are behind any sort of outlook that challenges their ability to even live, let alone ride a bike, it is also gives them what they think in an entitlement to say everyone else should learn from the mistakes they make... but if those mistakes -- which often involve someone else's poor judgment -- kill you, then there isn't any hope left (and just read the link in the Long Distance forum here in BF for the thread on an inquest to check that out).