Share the Road, My Ass

February 25, 2002

Ladies and gentlemen, today I want to inform you of a great and terrible environmental problem we are facing. This new pollution snarls our traffic, impedes our progress, and threatens our very well being. I am speaking, of course, of bicyclist pollution.

I know, I know. Bicycling is supposed to reduce pollution. It uses only human-generated calories, not energy created from the explosive combustion of impossible-to-replace fossil fuel. But there are simply too damn many of them on the road. At least, too damn many of them with pilots who don’t know to drive or refuse to obey traffic laws. For every bicyclist I see who understands how to use hand signals, I see ten who think nothing about going the wrong way down a one-way street, making sudden abrupt turns, or refusing to yield to pedestrians.

Some bicyclists perversely insist that they should be allowed to tool along 45 mile-per-hour roads at fifteen miles per hour, in the middle of the lane no less, to impress upon local governments the importance of building bike lanes. “If we don’t make a nuisance of ourselves, no one will ever listen to us,” they say.

Well, with all apologies to my boss (who cycles to work every day), the bicyclists can stuff it. At least until they learn to obey the traffic laws that are there. They need to learn some co-existence. And at least yield to pedestrians in sidewalks!

(Yes, I was nearly smashed into by a fast-traveling biker who elected to make a right turn at the very last minute, without warning or signal, just as I stepped into the crosswalk.)

In web site development news, the link at the very bottom of the main menu is now a “blogsnob” link. Use it to surf other blogs, undoubtedly better written and more established than mine.

The Tannahill Weavers: Epona

[ _This entry was previously called "Environmental Concerns," which sounds far more dull._ ]

Posted in Diary