To wonder why consideration and common sense seem to take a back seat nowadays

[Vintagejive]

"there's no law against it"

"I'm perfectly within my rights"

"I'm not breaking any rules"

I'm so fed up of seeing and hearing those excuses being trotted out to justify annoying or inconsiderate behaviour. Laws and rules often decide the 'minimum' standard of behaviour required in different situations, but AIBU to think that individuals should be capable of assessing the situation they're in and working out whether they're being rude, thoughtless, infringing on someone else or whatever without always having to have a regulation to dictate how they behave?

I agree with your point OP and just have to add that I think cycling on pavements is one of the most entitled and anti-social things you can do. I see it every damn day (I'm a pedestrian) and it gives me the utter rage. I've almost been knocked down a few times and been given the fright of my life many more times by some idiot whizzing past me like he /she owns the pavement.

And I am not anti-cycling - I think its a green and fun and healthy way of getting around. Lovely. Just stay on the pissing roads. And dont jump any red lights either!

Dragging this back to the original question - OP, YANBU. It's an attitude regularly displayed on MN, for example in relation to sitting outside cafés and blowing smoke over other patrons, or inconsiderate parking. I keep posting comments to the effect that, just because something is legal, it doesn't mean that it is either good manners or considerate.

Soup thanks for calling a 6 year old with ADHD stupid the child ran out without looking, cyclists asidd you should look where you're going: I don't blame her so much as her parents should have been supervising!

I agree he shouldn't have been going so fast.

Harriet if there is a cycle path obviously they should be on there, and shouldn't come behind people without warning!

Only I agree he was going at a ridiculous speed! I just think that people give cyclists a hard time when the other option of the road is unsafe. I also think in this case it was a big over reaction

OP, YANBU. Consideration for other people seems to be an increasingly rare trait these days and many people think that their right to behave as they like trumps everyone else. Our neighbour decided to valet his car on Sunday with his radio turned up v loud and blaring out dance music. It wouldn't even cross his mind that not everyone wants to hear his music at full blast and that turning it down a notch might be the neighbourly thing to do.

No, Lashes, I don't care if you agree with me about his speed.

Here is the salient point (again)

He was on the pavement on a bike. This is illegal. And also dangerous.

I am not giving 'cyclists' a hard time. No one here is. People are just saying 'Please cycle legally and thoughtfully. But mainly, cycle legally.'

I just think that people give cyclists a hard time when the other option of the road is unsafe.

The road is the only option when there are no cycle paths. You really are not getting it. Aside from it being illegal, cycling on a footpath is dangerous and irresponsible. If you genuinely feel that the road is unsafe for cycling, then that is your issue and you shouldn't cycle. I see plenty of cyclists on the roads, so clearly they don't all have a problem with the safety of roads.

It is laughable really. You claim roads are too unsafe for cyclists, and your solution is to make footpaths unsafe for pedestrians.

YANBU

For me, dogs being allowed to bark continuously, especially throughout the night and when you complain, being told it's a dog, it barks!

And swearing! It's everywhere - standing in the queue at the ATM or in the supermarket. Just walking down the street and someone shouting into their phone. When did we become a nation lacking in vocabulary. I'm not a prude but there is a time and a place!

Cyclists are not meant to be on the pavement so of course it was the cyclists fault. In the same way that if I decided to walk on the main road instead of the footpath, it would be my fault if I got knocked down.

Anyhow, I hope this thread doesn't get hijacked by a cycling debate

The video of the 3 year old being mown down by the cyclist on the pavement is horrific. I presume that is the incident you are all referring to?

It is ridiculous to say the parents should have been supervising . The Mum was walking to her car with child following her. Dad was obviously close by too as he leapt the wall pretty darn fast once he saw his daughter being dragged along the pavement.

Sorry, I live in London and I personally feel that a lot of cyclists are a menace on the roads and on the pavements.

Just two examples I have witnessed very recently - DH and I in our car at a roundabout in the outside lane as we were going straight ahead. DH indicates left as he is about to exit and two cyclists in the inside lane suddenly zoom past and try to overtake and exit right in front of him. DH nearly has a heart attack and has to slam on the brakes. Neither cyclist has a helmet on by the way and are both middle aged men.

Second incident was outside Chelsea Flower Show. There is a section of the cycle path which overlaps the pavement. However there are massive crowds at CFS and the pavement was completely covered with pedestrians and you couldn't see there was a cycle path. Anyway this cyclist comes speeding up this cycle path and barrows through the crowds, scattering people everywhere. Someone remonstrates with him and he gives them an earful of abuse back as of course he was on the cycle path so has a perfect right to be there.... was just lucky there were no 3 year olds or elderly people who couldn't leap out of the way . Another middle aged gentleman by the way so not the stereotypical rude teenager.

I don't think cyclists are safe or appropriate on most London roads to be honest and despair that cycling is being promoted so heavily as a form of everyday transport. Not safe for pedestrians and also not safe for the cyclists themselves when they have to share the road with trucks and the like.

There is a lady who lives in the same town as me, her kids go to the same school as mine etc.

I see her all the time, and I notice her because of her terrible parking. The school put out cones around the gates to stop people parking over the gates for safety reasons and she just parks there anyway. Or invents a space that blocks the whole flow of traffic. She abandons her car in the middle of the petrol station forecourt, and regularly parks on double yellow lines. She doesn't have a blue badge, I checked. Her parking is just atrocious, and so entitled.

Oh god, yes to the constant swearing . Took DD to a theme park on Saturday, and stopped at one point to watch a show. Family of five settled down beside us, three kids, one in a pushchair. The parents honestly could not get through one sentence without a liberal sprinkling of fucking this and fucking that. And they did not have quiet voices either. I am no prude, but come on! At a place that's full of kids? DD's ears were on stalks, I eventually lured her away with the promise of an ice cream after the the mother screeched at her DH, "Don't you dare go off and leave me alone with these fucking little shits". Charming.

Sorry Vintage for the hijack. It was a X post!

YANBU.
Some smokers think as long as they're outdoors they can light up anywhere they like because the law only specifies indoors. No scruples about smoking around babies, or in bus shelters on rainy days, or right in front of people in ATM queues.

People think as long as they're sitting in their own garden it doesn't matter how loud their music is because 'I'm entitled to. It's my garden'.

And then they wonder why we have increasingly become a nanny state, with legislation being passed for everything . Maybe if more people showed they were capable of acting thoughtfully without nanny legislation, there would be no need for it.

I think people in general are getting increasingly self-centred. Horrible actually.

I completely agree. There are so many examples of this from drivers in particular - people overtaking buses when it's not safe, or stopping in ridiculous places.

A couple of weeks ago, I was with my children and husband at the local shops on a Saturday afternoon - so lots of people around. Close to a bus stop - where there were kids, old people, just lots of pedestrians. We stopped to chat with a neighbour and while we were talking a motorbike bumped up the kerb and drove along the pavement about 15 or 20 feet, then parked. We all had to get out of the way - and I sort of grabbed my 5 year old to make sure he was okay.

I was absolutely furious because I'd got a fright and went to speak to the driver who was a middle aged man and was SO rude to me. He kept saying "what's your problem?" and when I said my problem was that he could have hit my child, he shouted over and over: "Did I hit him? Did I hit him?" until I eventually said no, and he was satisfied that he'd 'won' the argument. I was very upset by the whole thing - and only afterwards did I think that I was completely in the right - surely it's NEVER okay to drive a big motorbike (or a small one for that matter!) on the pavement? But he thought it was absolutely fine.

I don't think cyclists are safe or appropriate on most London roads to be honest and despair that cycling is being promoted so heavily as a form of everyday transport. Not safe for pedestrians and also not safe for the cyclists themselves when they have to share the road with trucks and the like.

Cycling is being promoted because it's good exercise and doesn't cause pollution and congestion. As the UK is a nation of fat-arses who will eventually choke on exhaust fumes while sitting in a giant traffic jam, promoting alternatives is GOOD THING!

Yes, everyone can give examples of cyclists behaving like fuckwits, but not nearly as many as they could of motorists doing the same. If sharing the road with motorists presents a danger to cyclists, the answer is to educate all road users on safety. Plenty of other European cities manage it.

I also hate the argument that 'my child is entitled to a seat on the bus. Why should he stand up for someone else?'
Yes, he's entitled to a seat, but it would be kind and polite to stand up for an elderly person.

YANBU lack of consideration or acknowledgement of others is widespread. I was at the airport last week and whilst we were waiting at the gate a woman was sat across two seats, sideways on with her legs and feet on one seat, her DP was sat next to her stroking her feet. They were both oblivious to other weary passengers stood up.

Make that three!

I always understood children giving up their seats as a sort of "social contract"; Uphold the tradition and do it for others, and the courtesy will be extended to you when you are older. The older generation might be rather pissed off that, having spent their childhoods springing out of their seats to offer them to their elders, this current generation of parents have reneged on the deal.

If we were all on a desert island and there were only a few of us we would have to work as a team to survive. Individualism and selfish behaviour would mean death. We would only survive as part of a group.

When there are too many of us and we can survive within a society of plenty BUT we need to fight against others for resources - then selfish behaviour is the logical thing to do.

Now there is intense competition for housing, jobs, space, quiet, road-space, money. Selfishness is a good strategy.

During the war for example - you needed your neighbours. (You never knew when your windows wouold be blown out or your breadwinner killed.). Now, if you build a house in your garden and house 15 people in it whilst pissin goff your neighbours - you make vast profits and are considered an entrepreneur.

I hate bad manners and greed but there is a lot more of it about than there used to be - for obvious reasons.

Think I'd disagree in general.

Also with certain things (eg parking in residential areas/outside houses) I think it's the complainers who are actually the rude/selfish/entitled.
And then they claim that those relying on their rights have no consideration or manners to set up a false dichotomy so that you either support community/politeness (their side) or all you care about is your legal rights and damn everyone else (the side they disagree with)

When in fact trying to stop others from doing something they're entitled to do because you'd prefer it if they weren't allowed is incredibly rude and selfish. It's literally demanding strangers adhere to your point of view just because you'd prefer that.

I agree that younger people should give up their seat for their elders, and I enforce the rule in my house whether the kids in question are mine or not. But public transport is a grey area for me, because I don't think it is terribly safe for a child (younger than say eleven or twelve) to be standing. In those situations I think it is up to the able bodied adults to vacate their seats for the elderly or disabled.

Shtupp usually though cyclists can avoid pedestrians and even if a collision occurs it's not exactly going to cause serious injury...

When my brother was a child he was hit by a cyclist riding on the pavement and he suffered a fractured skull amongst other injuries and was in a coma for several days. He made a full recovery, but he was lucky. So yes, it is dangerous and this is the reason it is illegal.

I agree with you that the roads are often dangerous for cyclists but that is a separate issue and gives no one the right or a valid excuse to ride on the pavement.

And OP I totally agree with you.