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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 09 2017, @07:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-get-mad-get-even dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Velonews has this story, http://www.velonews.com/2017/05/news/legally-speaking-brought-justice_437651 which describes an incident of road rage against a bicyclist. Turns out, this was the wrong cyclist to buzz, he was a lawyer and eventually settled with the cager's insurance company for USD $4500 -- setting a price for cyclist harassment in Louisiana.

The road-raging driver had just endangered the life of the cyclist and his toddler, and now he was spoiling for a fight. It began on a calm Sunday morning in New Orleans. Charlie Thomas had gone for a ride with his young daughter Colette, towing her in a Burley trailer, enjoying the ride and time together. But on the edge of the iconic French Quarter, their peaceful Sunday morning was violently interrupted when a speeding car buzzed them, passing within a foot of Charlie and Colette.

[...] "I'm not trying to start anything," Charlie said, "but you passed way too close to my daughter and me."

And that's when the driver, motioning that he was about to get out of his car, responded with his tough-guy threat: "How about I get out and f—k you up in front of your kid?" Charlie's emotions surged, but he knew that any further engagement would be unproductive, and with his daughter there, unsafe. So he broke off the encounter, and the driver sped away.

[...] Although the incident didn't involve a physical impact, Louisiana has both a three-foot passing law and a non-harassment law on the books. Charlie filed suit seeking damages for the driver's harassment. There had never been a case setting the value of damages for a harassed bicyclist under Louisiana's law, so Charlie and the driver's insurance company were in uncharted negotiating territory.

Eventually, Charlie negotiated a settlement that established a value of $4,500 damages in a civil case for cyclist harassment in Louisiana; the proceeds were donated to Bike Easy, the New Orleans-area bike advocacy group. The official case on the books is Thomas v. Arbona, Case No. 16-03127; First City Court for the City of New Orleans. Now, any other cyclist who sues a driver for harassment in Louisiana can use the value for damages established in this case.


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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:45PM (10 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday May 09 2017, @09:45PM (#507141) Journal

    Considering the ancestery [wikipedia.org] of people in USA. The people in the "south" is mostly of British origin and their relatives in Britain ain't uncivil so it must either been a new culture that has come to existence or only people with a specific mindset left for America and settled there. Another bias can be found in Australia where a slight tendency to be more relaxed and impulsive can be noted compared to homeland Britain.

    Just like there is a high proportion of nerds in say Berkeley. It has very little to do with the place itself and much more with who selected themselves to go there.

    So if the ancestors is not a explanation for the manners. It leaves environmental circumstances over decades or who choose to go there hundreds of years ago.

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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:07PM (9 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:07PM (#507149)

    I think you're overthinking it. People are largely a product of the environment they grow up in, not their ancestors they don't even remember. Take a bunch of small children of upper-middle-class families, and stick them on an island together without any adults and you get Lord of the Flies before long. The people of the South may be mostly British, but that was centuries ago, and none of them remember much about their ancestry before coming to the New World. Also, Southerners are very mixed-blood: I'd say most of them have a little bit of African and/or Native in them. But it's not the genetics that makes them how they are, it's the history of the South, its economic problems, its history of slavery, how it lost a civil war badly, etc. It created its own culture of anti-intellectualism and backwardness and racism, completely independent of any British roots from over 200 years ago. And the people didn't select themselves to go there; their ancestors did generations ago, but the people living in the South now largely did not; they grew up there.

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:58PM (8 children)

      by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:58PM (#507175) Journal

      Europe seems however making all kinds of subtle hints that ancestry (genetics + phenotype) has impact. And yeah that lord of the flies is something to recon with. I think some primitive people on New Guinea illustrated it by thinking that pregnant women had to whipped to please the gods or something. Cultures need enlightenment regularly.

      People don't get a say in who their ancestors where or their decision to bring them to this world. It still impacts them. But your point about the history is probably the explanation that fit the data. But is there any fundamental reason for their economic hardship?

      Still don't see why people should develop anti-intellectualism and backwardness just like that. If one want to change knowing, exploring and thinking is essential. Be open to change that improves is also important.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @11:52PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @11:52PM (#507195)

        But is there any fundamental reason for their economic hardship?

        Yes. LBJ nailed it: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." The entire country is racist. But the kind of racism LBJ was talking about rules the south, even today.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:24AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:24AM (#507267)

          If some groups have a higher rate of bad behavior. Eventually others will notice and change their behavior accordingly. Higher likelihood of lawsuits, robbery, violence and serial killing won't go unnoticed given enough time. The brain is a splendid pattern identifier.

          When people can't feel that they belong to the same group that exhibit these behaviors. They will not want to carry the burden of their presence and rejection follows.

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 10 2017, @12:32AM (4 children)

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @12:32AM (#507212)

        It's a product of their economy. The South developed as a slavery-based agrarian economy, not an industrial one. It's why they lost the Civil War so badly: a bunch of farmers and plantation owners with little industry have little chance against a force with a large industrial base. (This is also why the US did so well in WWII: its enormous industrial capacity at the time (mostly in the northeast, again) converted to making enormous amounts of military hardware--tanks, planes, bombs. It didn't need to make the best tanks and planes, it just had to make lots and lots of them; German tanks were technically superior in performance but they couldn't make them nearly as fast.

        Anyway, back to the South: they relied entirely on slavery to run their agrarian economy, which was dependent on growing and trading food. The North didn't have land that was so favorable to agriculture, so it turned more to industry instead. The cities in the North became much bigger and denser, and the site of industry, and the target of immigration from Europe. Agricultural places just aren't going to foster intellectualism the way advanced cities are.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @01:08AM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @01:08AM (#507225)

          California had no economy when the civil war was fought.
          California is a huge agricultural producer too.
          And yet California would be the 6th largest economy in the world [cbslocal.com] if it were its own country.
          The south's problems are more than just its agrarian roots.

          • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:16AM (1 child)

            by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:16AM (#507266) Journal

            And the advantage California got were that the military spent insane amounts of Cold War research money there to get all the gadgets they needed to fight that (cold) war.

            Dunno if Houston counts as "the south" but it seem to have a tech industry that can compete. Maybe some places in the south can be made to new research valleys provided there's a blue sky investment for decades. But the problem with cultural incompatibilities will remain. Performance thinkers will want freedom to express the result of their thinking and have a lifestyle that stimulates their active mind. This often collide with people having a static thought process. The thinker then realizes that it's more efficient strategy to move and spend the resources elsewhere than fighting the locals. And the region looses. Mathematically it can be suspected that once the sum of certain threshold factors collude, it's a runaway process.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @06:56PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @06:56PM (#507679)

              Dallas (telecom corridor) and Atlanta also have strong tech industries.
              And there has been lots of military spending in the south too. Consider Hunstsville Alabama which is defense/aerospace contractor central.
              Martin Marietta, now Lockhead Martin, was founded in Marietta just outside of Atlanta.
              And of course NASA on Florida's "space coast."

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:16PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:16PM (#508293)

          While industry was important during WWII, it did not have nearly as much influence on the civil war. The things you mention that are made by industry: tanks, planes, bombs, were not around during the civil war. People already had rifles.

          And industry is not the only way to do things. During WWII the west was hard pressed to beat Russia to Berlin. Russia also won their war, and suffered an order of magnitude more casualties. How did the USA lose the Vietnam war? Lack of industry?

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:26PM

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday May 11 2017, @02:26PM (#508091) Homepage
        > some primitive people on New Guinea illustrated it by thinking that pregnant women had to whipped to please the gods

        The saying "a woman, a dog [or ass], and a walnut tree - the more you beat them, the better they be" did not originate in the Pacific.
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves