Subj : Re: Totally
To   : Nightfox
From : Adept
Date : Mon Aug 14 2023 09:44:40

 Ni> Seems like splitting hairs there, and I'm not sure what difference it

Seems like, sure, but when people accept lots of death and destruction from cars, but get upset about a bicyclist going 10mph through a stop sign, it can seem like car drivers get a pass with phrasing like "accident" being the default, rather than "crash".

But I _absolutely_ know that a large portion of people who would read through this would view it as splitting hairs.

But I'm being pedantic about phrasing of words. There's basically no case where someone is doing that, that it's not splitting hairs. Though this is probably more important than when I rant against using "ur" to mean "your", but that's grammar, rather than meaning.

Anyway, I should probably drop this, soon, before people get irritated by it. If someone _is_ irritated, my apologies.

 Ni>  Ad> I've sometimes tilted at windmills a bit on this, but mostly because 
 Ni> "Tilted at windmills"?  I've never heard that before..

Well, you're one of today's lucky 10,000, and get to learn about Don Quixote, who is a fictional knight who went jousting against dangerous and frightening windmills.

Anyway, phrase is supposed to mean attacking imagined enemies, though I'm using it a bit more loosely than that, to basically just say that I've cared and ranted about the topic a fair bit, generally without thought that it'll accomplish more, nor that the people hearing the rant will particularly care. But I'd continue anyway, and that continuing is "tilting at windmills".

 Ni> We wouldn't say that because it wasn't just the bike that got into an
 Ni> accident..  You were riding on it, so I'd probably say "I was in a bike
 Ni> accident" or "I was in an accident while riding my bike" or something
 Ni> similar.

So when the person riding in the car came to a sudden stop, getting some minor amount of whiplash and/or just experiencing a bump, how are they any less involved than a person on a bike?

Yeah, people in cars are more protected. But it's also possible to significantly damage your bike while not doing particularly much damage to yourself. Or injure yourself without doing significant damage to a car.

Anyway, I'm guessing you get the point, even if you disagree with me, and certainly this is not the first time I've been told I'm overreacting on caring about language with transportation.

Though I suppose my original point is that the phrasing seems odd, regardless of how people actually understand it. Again, like driving a car and riding a bike, it's just... odd, since you're the motor driving the bike forward, and people can fairly easily fall asleep while piloting a car. But, sure people know that people aren't powering the wheel movement themselves, in a car.

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