Wednesday, November 13, 2013

A letter to the editor of the weekly standard on Christopher Caldwell's highly entertaining article about Cyclist.

Subject: Drivers Get Rolled, some comments.

Hello,
Just wanted to leave a few comments to Christopher Caldwell's article and noticed there was no place to comment so figured I would write you. I thank you in advance for passing them on to Mr. Caldwell for me.
Tell him I found the article very entertaining.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/drivers-get-rolled_766425.html#

Dear Mr. Caldwell,
I loved your article, it was highly entertaining, and informative. I just wanted to comment on a few things.
I have included excerpts from your article in red quotes.
I will look forward to your future articles.
thank you,
dangerd



CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL


Drivers Get Rolled


"Bicyclists sometimes do require the middle of the roadway, and do need special consideration"
Nice of you to acknowledge this but in practice someone in a car will almost NEVER see the need if it will inconvenience them for even a second. (Unless they too also cycle!)


"Unquestionably we have misbuilt our transport grid. It makes us car-dependent. It should better accommodate bikers and walkers. But for now it can’t."
Only because drivers of cars can't slow down till it's safe to pass even for 1 second. Better to kill the slow thing, it's not like you will go to jail.


"Bike-riders don’t “share” the road so much as take it over.
Hello - in most states they are "REQUIRED" to use the road.


"This would place drivers in a position of second-class citizenship on roads that were purpose-built for them."

Um, no they are for "vehicles" like cars, motorcycles, bikes, tractors, etc.
ROADS ARE NOT JUST FOR CARS, READ YOUR DAMN DRIVERS MANUAL.


"There are simply not enough cyclists to make that a reasonable idea."
Hey I thought you were complaining how there are so many that they are impeding traffic?!?


"at 40 times the present level it would still not be sensible public policy to squander a quarter, a third, or half of the lane space on a busy rush-hour artery for a bike lane."
Yea even 1% is too much, even if they outnumbered cars.

"Bike riding could be the wave of the future, or it could be a sports fad, the way tennis was in the 1970s"
How many tennis players were required to play in the road???
I'm sure drivers would have run them over too and gotten away with it by saying "I just did not see him!"

"The raised left hand means a right turn, the dropped left hand means slowing down"
As a cyclist when I use hand gestures (and I do all the time) it seems to confuse drivers of cars, But thanks for pointing this out to drivers - I sure hope they read this!
(also you left out, left hand held out left side signals left turn.)

 “Whenever someone bikes or walks to the store or to work,” the writer began, “he or she is taking one automobile off the road and making a significant contribution both to Brookline’s safety and to reducing the carbons so dangerous to life on earth.”
I don't care, I don"t have children and could care less if your children inherit an Earth where they can not breathe.
Thanks for thinking so highly of me though.

"They are, to judge from their blogs, more aggrieved by delivery trucks parked in bike lanes than drivers are by delivery trucks parked in car lanes."
Whenever that truck is parked in the bike lane I have to get into the "car" lane and some douchebag in a car yells at me that I don't have a right to be there and trys to run me over. Sorry.

"This generation is at the height of its earning power, and bikers are drawn from the very richest part of it."
Well you got the age thing right but I would not call myself rich, if only, I wish.
But if you are trying to imply that "rich" people ride bikes and that "rich" people are "self important assholes", OK I will agree the latter.
as in: "bicycling is a rich person’s hobby", no us poor do it to, guess it's more popular than you would think.

"It is never about educating bicyclists on how to find alternative modes of transport."
Oh you mean like a car? Thanks for the advice but I have one and drive over 100 miles a day in Los Angeles so your children can choke on the smog. Sorry sometimes I just want to ride my bike.

"An action that is ignorable at the individual level—such as cycling down the middle of the street at high speed—can become a problem when the masses do it. "
Alright we have established that in most states cyclist are "required" to use the road, now you are saying that we should ride slower??? Were you not saying earlier that we "impede traffic"??? I'm getting confused.

"Washington, D.C.’s Capital Bikeshare program has failed to win a following"
I own my own bike thanks, you don't need to subsidize me. I think that not enough people who don't ride bikes in Washington just did not want to take a chance with the crazy car drivers running them over in an "accident".


"While it is wrong to call bicyclists a downtrodden minority, they are a minority in one sense."
Yes we are the only people who you can run over in your car, tell the cop at the scene - "I just didn't see him" then walk away without any investigation, charges or fine.

(Hey incidentally if you want to murder someone, just run them over with your car, throw a bike on the ground near them and then call the cops on yourself!)


Ok, that last part was just cyclist humor, sorry!




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