Parks at night are dangerous by their nature and short skirts are unpredictable and unprotected forms of clothing to wear. It is entirely understandable that there will be a large amount of sexual assaults involving attractive young women wearing short skirts, particularly in parks which aren't designed to let them walk across safely.
Choosing to wear a short skirt subsequently bears significant risk and those who choose to do it surely carry a large proportion of the responsibility if they get raped, not to mention the risks they pose to rapists by causing them to enter a dark park where they might get mugged themselves.
I understand wearing short skirts where it is safe to but am not convinced wearing them when going out for the night is worth it.
Did anyone here not think that argument was absurd? When did blaming the victim become an ethically acceptable basis for setting public policy?
Humans driving at the legal speed limit are dangerous by their nature. We arent perfect and dont see everything - the likelihood of an accident is simply a matter of probability.
I don't think it is any stretch of reasoning to say that choosing to be close to and often in the path of people driving at legal speed in itself carries risk, indiscriminate of how good and conscientious the driver is.
Humans driving at the legal speed limit are dangerous by their nature. We arent perfect and dont see everything - the likelihood of an accident is simply a matter of probability.
If you can't drive safely at a given speed, slow down. It's really as simple as that.
(Yes, of course there are exceptions. If you're driving an emergency response vehicle then the likely damage caused by arriving later may be genuinely greater than the likely damage caused by going faster. But obviously we're not talking about that sort of situation here and for normal driving it really is that simple.)
Why do you think it is unreasonable of me to say that someone who puts themselves in a risky position is by definition partly to blame?
I don't accept your premise that cycling around town on public roads is necessarily a risky position.
I live in Cambridge, UK, a city known for having a lot more cyclists than most places in this country, and also known for its historical (read: narrow and windy) street plan. It's about as cycle-hostile an environment as you can get and it's difficult to make big changes to improve things anywhere near the city centre. And yet in a couple of decades of living here, moving around as both a cyclist and a driver, I have never been concerned about a car-cycle accident from either side.
This doesn't require some level of super-human reaction time and supreme driving skill in the car, nor a force shield around my bike. It just requires following the basic legal rules of the road and allowing for the fact that not all road users are the same. In particular, I avoid potential accidents with cyclists all the time when driving, often simply because I allow plenty of space around them so when something unexpected happens there's still room for everyone when the cyclist suddenly changes speed or direction. You are never, contrary to your original post, forced to overtake a cyclist. In fact, if it would be dangerous to do so, you are legally required not to overtake, as with passing any other vehicle.
If a cyclist breaks the rules themselves and then gets hurt, sure, assign them some or all of the responsibility. I don't care you are less protected than a car, he had the green light and you knowingly or carelessly ran a red. I do not support calls for car drivers to be legally responsible for any car-cyclist accident by default, because I see cyclists do insane stuff like this every day.
But if a cyclist is simply using the road in an otherwise considerate way, there really isn't any need for cars to go racing past them at high relative speeds and with little clearance (and no, a bit of ill-judged paint that some authority slapped on the road does not excuse a lack of basic driving skills). And if drivers don't do that, and cyclists follow the rules too, then your original claim that "It is entirely understandable that there will be a large amount of lethal accidents involving cyclists" just doesn't stand up in my experience. Accidents do happen, and sadly some degree of injury and even death is almost inevitable unless we close down efficient transportation systems altogether; on this much, we agree. But to cause a fatal car-cycle crash usually requires not only bad luck but also a failure on the part of either or both of the driver and the cyclist to follow the rules, and at that point it's not just an accident any more.
I completely agree that different roads carry different risks - I think cycling around a city centre is completely different than cycling on a winding country road - but indiscriminate of the magnitude, I think it is undeniable to say that there is a risk.
Causes of accidents have such a diverse and complex range of causes, I think it is not right to make as clear-cut an argument 'if everyone drove safely there would be no accidents'.
In my mind it is much safer to consider the road as a complex system with relatively predictable probability of injury (which in its function contains the risk of meeting an unsafe driver, but is not limited to that). I realise on a case-by-case level there is a definitive split of blame and I'm not attempting to isolate drivers from any blame, but simply from the cyclist's view all I'm asking you to accept is the following:
1) a risk of injury for cyclists originates from the 'system' of traffic on a road
2) someone who enters willingly into a situation, aware that doing so carries a risk (eg climbing a ladder) must accept some (not necessarily all) responsibility in that decision if the risk becomes realised.
1) Dangerous driving is not always an active choice
2) Even if (1) was true, it is incorrect to assert that the entirety of the danger to cyclists on the road is dangerous drivers
It may be that you were aware that this was the case and your phrasing was simply an attempt (consciously or unconsciously) at being emotive, but it made your statement incorrect to be so definitive.
Sadly, a significant proportion of the human population is sociopathic. So far the best answer we've found as a society is to try to avoid allowing such people to be in situations where they will do real harm to others.
Fortunately, most people aren't like that, so attempting to establish conventions so everyone can interact safely on the road (or in the park, for that matter) is still worthwhile.
Parks at night are dangerous by their nature and short skirts are unpredictable and unprotected forms of clothing to wear. It is entirely understandable that there will be a large amount of sexual assaults involving attractive young women wearing short skirts, particularly in parks which aren't designed to let them walk across safely.
Choosing to wear a short skirt subsequently bears significant risk and those who choose to do it surely carry a large proportion of the responsibility if they get raped, not to mention the risks they pose to rapists by causing them to enter a dark park where they might get mugged themselves.
I understand wearing short skirts where it is safe to but am not convinced wearing them when going out for the night is worth it.
Did anyone here not think that argument was absurd? When did blaming the victim become an ethically acceptable basis for setting public policy?