LogFAQs > #972231632

Clench281 posted...

Thought experiment: If someone owned a bike of their own but also used bikeshare for 90% of their trips, would you agree it would be perfectly acceptable for them to say their primary bike is the bikeshare one?

No, for the same reason. If somebody starts saying "my bike" in talking about a bikeshare bike, they're obviously wrong. The bikeshare is their primary means of getting around by bike, but not their primary bike. The method of transportation can be identified as theirs (by virtue of being a decision they have made), but not the object itself (by virtue of belonging to somebody else).

A bikeshare actually nicely illustrates another issue with this concept beyond the question of ownership, which is the question of consistency: If you're using a bikeshare, there's a pretty substantial chance that you'll make dozens of trips without using the same bike twice. To say "this is my primary bike" about a bike you've literally never ridden before is very obviously silly, even if it's identical to the one you rode that morning (or even to the one you actually own, if you purchased the same model as the bikeshare uses for whatever reason). The same issue applies to buses, trains, and other forms of public transit, though it's less pronounced because the turnover is so much lower.

More than being logically valid or correct or anything like that, though, it's just plain weird. Saying "this is my bus" as equivalent to "this is the bus I am planning to take, so I must now board it" is common, but that's very obviously an idiom and not in any way equivalent to saying "this is my car," which is the equivalency this topic presents. Expressing a sense of ownership of a public transit vehicle stops really being acceptable when you stop being young enough that people will chuckle at you for being cute.