Wearing short skirts is a significant part of the freedom of lifestyle and expression which women in our society have gained over the past 80-odd years and continue to work to protect and expand. It requires unambiguous malice (or mental illness) to attack a woman simply because she is wearing a short skirt. Thus it is a deplorable failure of society's duty of care towards women to suggest that if they choose to wear a short skirt then they have placed themselves outside the realm where society can be expected to protect them.
Walking across the road in the assumption that traffic will stop for you is not a significant freedom at all. The rules of precedence here are essentially arbitrary - from the point of view of ethics it doesn't matter who has right of way, so long as somebody does and everyone knows who it is. Thus it is reasonable to argue in favour of placing responsibility either with the driver, or with the pedestrian, according to whatever you think. I think that because of the pragmatic issues - basically predictability of movement - responsibility should lie with the pedestrian since it's easier for them to take responsibility than it is for drivers to do so.
It's also perfectly reasonable to advocate that pedestrians carry out the analogy of defensive driving, and not assume that reality will somehow conform to the highway code. This seems to be essentially what bateleur is doing.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2003-06-20 02:43 am (UTC)No it isn't.
Wearing short skirts is a significant part of the freedom of lifestyle and expression which women in our society have gained over the past 80-odd years and continue to work to protect and expand. It requires unambiguous malice (or mental illness) to attack a woman simply because she is wearing a short skirt. Thus it is a deplorable failure of society's duty of care towards women to suggest that if they choose to wear a short skirt then they have placed themselves outside the realm where society can be expected to protect them.
Walking across the road in the assumption that traffic will stop for you is not a significant freedom at all. The rules of precedence here are essentially arbitrary - from the point of view of ethics it doesn't matter who has right of way, so long as somebody does and everyone knows who it is. Thus it is reasonable to argue in favour of placing responsibility either with the driver, or with the pedestrian, according to whatever you think. I think that because of the pragmatic issues - basically predictability of movement - responsibility should lie with the pedestrian since it's easier for them to take responsibility than it is for drivers to do so.
It's also perfectly reasonable to advocate that pedestrians carry out the analogy of defensive driving, and not assume that reality will somehow conform to the highway code. This seems to be essentially what bateleur is doing.