They'll laugh when you're killed
The "dead cyclist had it coming" crowd doesn't even try to hide their feelings anymore.
This post is too long for email. Click the title to read in your browser.
“I am pro-dead cyclist.” This guys is an anonymous account but he’s not alone in his worldview. How did we get here?!
Two of my favorite urbanism topics also happen to be topics that are guaranteed to ruffle feathers on social media: (1) roundabouts and (2) bike helmets. I do enjoy a bit of conversational chaos on X/Twitter when it relates to promoting human flourishing.
Late last week, I saw a video of an RV driver losing patience with a cyclist and knocking him to the ground. He survived, but you’d hold your breath watching it. I’d share it here, but the original poster removed the video. I do have a couple screenshots:
Here’s what I said in my post:
You may have noticed he’s riding along the sharrows. As he moves uphill he gets wobbly and I have no idea if it’s because he had to pass a double-parked minivan or because he’s purposefully making a point about passing distance in his city.
It’s not a long clip. I have no idea if this was a planned demonstration, if he always rides with a sign, if there were others in the group. I don’t know. I do know the social media response was bonkers—and exactly what I said it’d be in my post.
Americans have a perverse way of justifying violence when they’re inconvenienced behind the wheel of a car.
Three days after my original post, it had been seen over 7 million times and righteously mocked by thousands of people who want to see real-life Mad Max road wars.
Is there ever a cause that’s worth slowing down traffic? Is there ever a valid reason to go so far as to block traffic?
Community organizers understand the power of groups. One person acting alone doesn't have nearly the impact. Saul Alinsky covers this brilliantly in Rules for Radicals.
Group psychology is part of the reason large scale protests can be so effective. Not just for the participants realizing they aren't alone, but for people who read about it later. You feel more empathy when you see a large group drawing attention to some injustice.
What you see above is the kind of demonstration that needs to be more common in American neighborhoods if we're ever going to persuade leaders to take traffic safety seriously. Streets are dangerous by design, but there are proven ways to engineer safer streets.
Whether it’s shortening pedestrian crossing distances or protecting cyclists from motor vehicles. This stuff is fixable!
In the State of Washington it is legal to bicycle on the sidewalk. A much safer option than bicycling in dense car and truck traffic. Laws against bicycling on the sidewalk need to be eliminated.
Oh man, this hits close to home! I am the rare bicyclist in suburban Orange County, CA, riding my bikes for transportation.
Recently, I’ve was riding home after dinner and a driver squeezed by me by about 10”, even though there were two more lanes of traffic going in the same direction toward the gate of our gated community. I was mad, of course.
But that was nothing: he stopped after the gate, waited for me, opened his car window and yelled “you f***ing bitch, get the f*** out off the lane! Don’t you dare slow me down!”
I yelled back that he was the one violating the law: effective this year in CA cars have to not just pass by 3+ feet but must give the entire lane when feasible--and with surgery lane going the same direction it’s clearly feasible.
These people are the minority and when I posted about this encounter in my local Facebook group I received overwhelming support--but there was one guy who applauded the driver and said I had it coming if “a Range Rover runs you over.”