Raise the Hammer

Well highwater IMHO you are stupid to walk alone at all hours. It not just Hamilton, its anywhere. If you want to play a risky game thats your personal choice but you can't force it on others who are more conscious of their personal safety and don't take unreasonable risks

Not only are your remarks insulting, they're presumptuous and sexist as well. Only a man would be so arrogant as to think that a woman could grow up in our society without developing a highly-tuned sense of danger, and the ability to make instinctive, split-second risk assessments - something a man such as yourself can never really understand. I may be middle-aged now, and no longer as much of a target as I was when I was young, but the 'spider sense' I developed when I was young and more vulnerable is imprinted on my brain and continues to govern the way I calculate risk.

And it just so happens that I developed my sense of danger living in sketchy neighbourhoods in Toronto that have much higher crime rates than any neighbourhood in Hamilton, so if anything, my innate sense of risk is actually more highly developed than you and your wife's. So if I say I am comfortable walking around this city after dark, it is because I don't find any of the traditional risk markers here, and Hamilton's relatively low crime rate backs up my observations.

Live in a self-imposed prison all you want, but know that your fears are irrational and based on suspicion and prejudice toward your fellow Hamiltonians, and not on any real risk of danger as evidenced by our relatively low crime rate.

That said, I believe you are overstating your case, and you and your wife don't actually live in the constant state of fear that you suggest, but were attempting to leverage your alleged fears to argue against LRT. Nice try.

Comment edited by highwater on 2011-01-17 11:37:07