> It is entirely reasonable to wonder how that might extrapolate to other addictive activities.
I presume my GP would have no objections to regulating these things their commenter whatabouted. The inconsistency is with the legislator, not in GPs arguments.
> a reasonable response would be to point out all the things that are more dangerous than bikes that the vast majority of people clearly do not want to outlaw.
I disagree. It is in fact not a reasonable argument, it is not even a good argument. It is still whataboutism. There are way better arguments out there, for example:
Bicycles are in fact regulated, and if anything these regulations are too lax, as most legislators are categorizing unambiguous electric motorcycles as bicycles, allowing e-motorcycle makers to market them to kids and teenagers that should not be riding them.
Now as for the whatabout cars argument: If you compare car injuries to bicycle injuries, the former are of a completely different nature, by far most bicycle injuries will heal, that is not true of car injuries (especially car injuries involving a victim on a bicycle). So talking about other things that are more dangerous is playing into your opponents arguments, when there is in fact no reason to do that.
I believe you have a categorical misunderstanding of what "whataboutism" actually means.
If the point being made is "people don't generally agree with that position" it is by definition not whataboutism. To be whataboutism the point being made is _required_ to be nil. That is, the two things are not permitted to be related in a manner that is relevant to the issue being discussed.
Now you might well disagree with the point being made or the things being extrapolated from it. The key here is merely whether or not such a point exists to begin with. Observing that things are not usually done a certain way can be valid and relevant even if you yourself do not find the line of reasoning convincing in the end.
Contrast with my example about countries persecuting groups of people. In that case there is no relevant relation between the acts or the groups. That is whataboutism.
So too your earlier example involving human trafficking. The fact that enforcement is not always successful has no bearing (at least in and of itself) on whether or not we as a society wish to permit it.
BTW when I referred to danger there it wasn't about cars. I had in mind other recreational activities such as roller blading, skateboarding, etc. Anything done for sport that carries a non-negligible risk of serious injury when things go wrong. I agree that it's not a good argument. It was never meant to be.
Obviously I also think the commenter would support that - I said as much in GP. In context, the reply is suggesting (implicitly) that it is an absurd stance to take. That it means being largely against the way our society is currently organized. That is not a whataboutism.
Like if someone were to say "man we should really outlaw bikes, you can get seriously injured while using one" a reasonable response would be to point out all the things that are more dangerous than bikes that the vast majority of people clearly do not want to outlaw. That is not whataboutism. The point of such an argument might be to illustrate that the proposal (as opposed to any logical deduction) is dead on arrival due to lack of popular support. Alternatively, the point could be to illustrate that a small amount of personal danger is not the basis on which we tend to outlaw such things. Or it could be something else. As long as there's a valid relationship it isn't whataboutism.
That's categorically different than saying "we shouldn't do X because we don't do Y" where X and Y don't actually have any bearing on one another. "Country X shouldn't persecute group Y. But what about country A that persecutes group B?" That's a whataboutism. (Unless the groups are somehow related in a substantial manner or some other edge case. Hopefully you can see what I'm getting at though.)