"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:4ab1277c@news.povray.org...
>
>  Instead, children are always driven by car to and from wherever they
> need to go.
>
Just as another way of looking at this issue, the "car culture" is huge in 
the US.  In most places in the world, bicycles are all over the place. 
People driving cars must be more patient in those countries.  As an avid 
"cyclist" in the US, I can honestly say that not only to most people think 
"You should get the f*** off the road!" but roads are becoming less and less 
bicycle friendly.  At the same time, our society is trying to build bike 
paths, all over the place.  70 years ago people would have openly wondered 
why we needed bicycle trails, as we already had roads, and they work just 
fine for bicycles.

Something which irritates me (short rant).  We have a major divided hi-way 
near where I live.  I used to ride my bike across it.  Recently, the 
government decided to install a "Michigan Left Turn" 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_left) and to also remove the center 
section which allowed traffic to proceed straight across the highway, so now 
you have to make a right-turn, then a left-turn (U-turn) in order to go 
straight across.  That's fine.  Someone was killed there a couple years ago, 
and there are a lot of accidents.  Maybe that will help.  Fine.  I can deal 
with that.  But what if I want to ride my bike across the highway?  Well, 
now I have to ride my bike 1/2 mile down a busy major hi-way.  That's 
something I try to avoid at all costs.  The alternative is to cross two 
lanes of traffic, stop in the fast lane, walk my bike through the new 
ditch,that used to be the road crossing, get back on my bike, cross 2 more 
lanes of traffic, then continue on.  They did not even consider the 
possibility of people on bicycles or even pedestrians.  It apparently never 
even crossed their minds that anyone not in a car would be on a road.

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