OMG, a published piece indicating that safety is relative, and that other factors should also be weighed? And that different answers might be right for different people?
*clutches chest in shock*
2010-12-13 19:15:03
6
The Ethicist: Transporting your children by bicycle
The Ethicist: Transporting your children by bicycle is sufficiently safe
(an apparently syndicted "advice" column)
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Q. My wife and I frequently transport our 4-year-old and 1-year-old by bicycle. They wear helmets and ride in a trailer or bike-mounted seats. People sometimes challenge us, asking if this is safe. The chances of our being hit by a car are low, but the consequences could be catastrophic. Is it OK to take the kids by bike when our admittedly safer, albeit not risk-free, car is available? - Derek Pelletier, Portland, Maine.
A. Your parental duty requires you to find not the safest conceivable mode of travel, but only one sufficiently safe. If you made the former your standard, even the car would be too dicey and you would have to haul your kids to school in the M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank. Many parents, including me, sometimes transport their children by bike. Or I did when my daughter was younger. At 23, she's reluctant to squeeze into the little trailer.
Different parents tolerate different levels of risk for their children. Some allow their kids to go rock climbing while on fire; others forbid them to leave the house unless they're swaddled in Bubble Wrap. Hypothetically. I've never actually met anyone like that. But the general observation holds: There is no universal and immutable scale for your ethical obligation here. But there is a better way to describe your duty: Seek prudent, not utopian, transportation.
There are other ways this choice affects your kids and your community. If you forswear bikes and travel with them only by car, you teach them to do likewise, promoting the sedentary lifestyle that contributes to obesity and other health problems, and you express acceptance of the environmental damage cars inflict even on nondrivers - two disheartening lessons.
Reading (PA) Eagle, December 12, 2010
2010-12-13 18:09:07
The Ethicist is awesome. Good to know that he (Randy Cohen) is also a bicyclist! The column runs in the Sunday New York Times & there's a podcast version, too. It's always a fun read in part because he's good at understanding the difference between ethics and manners.
2010-12-13 19:24:51
ah, ethics vs. manners. vs. morals? my dad always says "morals is what you can afford", but I'm not sure that's relevent.
It is always refreshing that someone unabashedly publically accepts shades of gray in their lives (and others' lives).
2010-12-13 19:31:28
2010-12-13 19:51:54
thank you alnilam, that was funny, and explains some troubles I have with the ethics hotline at work 
2010-12-14 01:16:53