• Avid Amoeba
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    1 year ago

    I’m not of a fan of the whataboutism either. Many of us are all three. Objectively a pedestrian-cyclist crash is a lot less likely to leave you with a life changing injury than a pedestrian-car crash, purely due to the massive difference in energies involved. In order to get a more accurate intuition for the expected damage, you have to think about the energy involved. That’s given by the speed (squared) times the mass. A light car is about 10x heavier than a cyclist on a bike. For the same speed it has 10x the energy to impact on your bones and tissues. Therefore you should expect a lot more damage. That doesn’t mean that the large number of pedestrian-cyclist near-misses isn’t mentally impactful. They are and they do absolutely happen a lot. Getting scared regularly isn’t healthy or fun. Ironically though, cars going quietly at 30kph don’t feel as scary, yet they will easily maim pedestrians on impact, often permanently. My destroyed subtalar joint from a seemingly minor accident on a crossing can attest to that.