Hate crime against cyclist and neigbours

Yorkshire wallet wrote:

The problem is IMO that some of these ‘Youtube cyclists’ seem to have vastly more problems than your everyday cyclist.

…..

There’s been plenty of good done by cameras, don’t get me wrong but they do seem to bring out the worst in certain people.

I agree with you to a point. There are some out there that are clearly out to film bad driving as a campaign (Traffic Droid for one, who if anyone points out his faults makes the video private and har a riding style that causes frustration and incidents)

Magnatom I feel is a “normal cyclist” but at times can overreact, as we all can when we feel threatened by poor driving. I’m not sure if it’s just how the camera picks it up, but he does often sound “whiny” when dealing with motorists.  Sometimes I think he needs to suck it up and maybe be a bit more polite when pointing out “less serious” faults.

kraut wrote:

HalfWheeler wrote:

I’m pretty sure anti-cycling trolls aren’t using the argument; public shaming hasn’t made the roads any safer for us cyclists. 

You might care to reflect on that.

 

Indeed. The public shaming is only necessary because the police so often fail to prosecute despite the evidence.

This seems to suggest that public shaming and police prosecutions are somehow equivalents – I am tempted to agree insofar as they are both negative reiforcements which seem to have very little effect on actually changing behaviour and attitudes.

kraut wrote:

HalfWheeler wrote:

I’m pretty sure anti-cycling trolls aren’t using the argument; public shaming hasn’t made the roads any safer for us cyclists. 

You might care to reflect on that.

 

Indeed. The public shaming is only necessary because the police so often fail to prosecute despite the evidence.

Ah vigilantism!

We can all see the negative consequences of acting as a vigilante in this very article! (poor mr Magnatom).

And we all condemn the ‘vigilantism’ of those persecuting him and his neighbours because they see him as a menace.

Yet you still can’t see how utterly unproductive it is,  to be so confrontational!

I do dispair.. 

davel wrote:

I wonder if there are any cyclists who’ve mastered arguing with motorists as a YouTube business model 🙂

Your risk-adjusted returns would be dreadful.

The attention is more

The attention is more valuable than the money for some of these people though.

nuclear coffee wrote:

beezus fufoon wrote:

+1 to Flying Scot and HalfWheeler

seeing so many youtube vids, it seems that when people get a cam there is a temptation to go looking for trouble and highlighting the smallest non-incident – if I had one single ride with such a lack of trouble I’d consider it one of my safer rides!

 

If that’s your attitude, then – and I find it hard to state how non-judgementally I am trying to say this – you deserve everything you get on the road.

 

Seriously.  What you won’t take effort to change is exactly what you deserve.

quite right – I do get what I deserve – which is a very different attitude to going around blaming everyone else.

two things I perceive I will not change by cycling – infrastructure, and the general attitude found in the u.k. – in most European countries, the majority of pedestrians actually wait at crossings until the signal changes, even if the road is clear – people accept and follow the rules, whereas in the U.K. we seem to prefer to engage in a struggle for dominance – which is exactly what youtube cyclecam posters are actually doing by trying to punish others by shaming them, and exactly what drivers are doing by punishment passes…

– maybe I’m a bit strange, but I actually enjoy my rides and feel no need to try to change the world with some kind of angsty adolescent directionless idealism – I have no doubt that many road users believe it is oh so unfair and that some authority (father figure) should change things to make it fairer for them in order to lessen their frustration – I even know and support people who do campaign for positive changes and actually make an input into possible improvements – this is certainly not achieved by promoting a concept of social justice which involves one individual exacting their own personal punishments on another individual – it doesn’t even make them happy or seem to do anything to lessen their niggling frustrations, it only seems to fuel the fire of the very system they are complaining about.

Best case scenario he’s

Best case scenario he’s pulling in £30/ month. Good on him. 

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

HalfWheeler wrote:

@ Fifth Gear

It’s counterproductive because the public shaming (crucial distinction) does nothing to alter the sheer volume of bad driving behaviour (surely his main aim?), further enrages those who have an axe to grind against cyclists and makes neutrals or courteous drivers more antagonistic towards cyclists. His videos also get picked up by the Daily Mail. The btl comments just engender more cycling hate and reinforce the attitiudes and behaviour of bad drivers.

I don’t entirely buy this argument. The BTL comments on the DM are generally by people who are absolutely entrenched in tribal car-fixated attitudes (along with the whole nexus of DM prejudices), and you just know they will react the same way to pretty much anything. These bad-driving videos aren’t going to make them any worse. What kind of videos do you think would make them be pro-cycling? I don’t think there is anything that would have that effect, because their attitudes are too deeply ingrained, nothing is going to make any difference to them, they will react in the same irrational way to everything. Other than, perhaps, several decades of better infrastructure persuading a few of them to try two-wheels themselves. The only thing that really changes most people are changes to their objective experiences over an extended period of time. And some people are never going to change, you just have to hope that’s a minority. I agree that it sometimes seems as if some of the helmet-cam guys have an unusually high number of bad incidents, but I don’t know how much they cycle or where, and it would take a methodical analysis of statistics to be sure if that is the case. And I just find it very hard to believe they can really make any money of significance out of youtube revenues, relative to effort and time. It doesn’t strike me as a way to get rich quick. I don’t think the videos have a big effect either way, they are just noise. But I don’t object to the helmet-cam crowd making them. And they do document the reality of how many drivers behave on the roads as they are – though it shouldn’t be about identifiable individuals unless you are reporting them to the police.

You obviously don’t know a lot about Youtube. There are some people who make their entire living out of Youtube videos now.  They post a minimum of three times a week covering every category you can think of e.g. kittens, jokes, documentaries, exercise.  There are also individual bike vloggers and cycling channels.  None of these bike vloggers and cycling channels focus on accidents but on all aspects of cycling like cycling websites.