Mickeyspinn
rBotM Winner
That's awful.....I feel for your daughters....society just doesn't seem to be progressing and law just isn't keeping up.....living in fear is not healthyThat's a fair point but it also opens up a can of worms. The eldest two certainly would take taxis on occasion but not without precautions. If it was just one of them, on their own, usually just one taxi company would be used and that was because we had built up a good working relationship with them. They could tell us the name of the driver and we would know who it was, partly through my wife, who doesn't drive. That might seem overly cautious but, while the girls were at primary school, the young mother of one of their friends was murdered by a taxi driver, and it made an impact on them—well, on all of us. However, that's not the only reason that they don't feel 100% safe in taxis: it's the wider experience of creepy guys and sexual harassment both online and in the real world. All three of them have experienced it to varying degrees: bums pinched or slapped, unwelcome comments, persistent nagging for topless photos . . . Violent assault is not the only cause for concern. Our youngest simply will not take a taxi at all because she doesn't feel safe in them. I give a lot of lifts because so many guys are arseholes around women. Whatever car stress I might get is less than the stress the girls face around guys.
And to return to the original point of this thread: while it's undoubtedly a good thing for some people to give up their cars and use pedal power or public transport instead, until everyone feels safe doing so, sadly, there are always going to be sectors of the population for whom a car provides relative safety as well as transport.
However there's safety in numbers....it's all statistics like a little fish swims on his own chances are he won't see tomorrow.....swim with the shoal chances are vastly improved! More people out of boxes and their bubbles the better for all. One thing that has struck me since cutting back on the tinbox is the hellos and head nods from other slower paced road users....don't get that in cars. I guess you could say in some ways the car has been the worst thing ever for society!
It's reached the point in urban environments that car travel is the slowest and most isolated...the only human exchanges on the commute are mouthed f...u...and the hand shandy shake!