I've never owned or driven a car, yet they're around me every day, putting my life at risk (both short-term, that they may crash into me; and long-term, since I'm forced to breathe their emissions)
Whilst pedestrians should avoid risky behaviour, we're still largely powerless; e.g. I recently had an encounter with a motorist reversing out of their driveway without looking, and I've twice had motorists drive down the pavement (sidewalk) towards me (once when the road was water-logged, the other time they were trying to bypass traffic).
At the same time, it's not possible to eliminate all risk from life. Even if all cars disappeared overnight, pedestrians are still getting killed by cyclists for example. And with cars gone there would be a huge increase in cycling, thus cycling-involved deaths.
In such a world (where cars disappeared) would we be having this thread about a need to now ban all bicycles?
To some extent there will always be some risk, just need to find ways to minimize it while balancing utility.
I was mostly responding to your point about agency and powerlessness; and the implicit assumption that 'car crash victim' ⊂ 'car driver'.
As for a hypothetical bicycle ban in a counterfactual universe, I find the premise too uninteresting to form an opinion about.
I'm far more interested in this world; and don't much care for vacuous syllogisms like 'killing is bad; X kills; therefore X is bad', when there's more to be gleaned from measurement, comparison and statistics. For example, off the top of my head:
- How many are killed by cars compared to bicycles (say, per person-km)?
- How likely is a car crash to kill someone compare to a bicycle crash?
- What is the impact on life-expectancy from driving versus cycling (e.g. sedentary activity versus exercise)?
- How does the throughput of bicycles compare to that of cars?
- How does the infrastructure cost of bicycles compare to that of cars?
- How does the environmental impact of bicycles compare to that of cars?
- etc.
I find these to be far more interesting questions than trivial binaries like 'do cars kill?' (yes; so what?), or 'do bicycles kill?' (yes; so what?).
Similarly, the statistics above can inform a whole spectrum of decisions and interventions that can be made; again, off the top of my head:
- The setting of speed limits
- The setting of road-worthiness criteria
- The setting of test and license requirements
- The layout and features of infrastructure (sight-lines, speed bumps, roundabouts, pedestrian crossings, traffic lights and their sequencing, etc.)
- The classification and permitted uses of roads (e.g. one-way systems, bus lanes, segregated or integrated cycle lanes, etc.)
- etc.
Again, these are seem far more interesting than strawman cliches like "should we ban X?" (which, as far as I can see, you're the one bringing up? I certainly never mentioned it)
Whilst pedestrians should avoid risky behaviour, we're still largely powerless; e.g. I recently had an encounter with a motorist reversing out of their driveway without looking, and I've twice had motorists drive down the pavement (sidewalk) towards me (once when the road was water-logged, the other time they were trying to bypass traffic).