The choices you make
The World’s Best Ex (and next-door neighbor!) sent me a comic strip that made me smile broadly and remember why I love him. How much does that rock, that an EX took the time & effort to make me smile?!
On my way home from work, I saw a new VW Beetle with a vanity plate that read: 1701-G. Okay, fanboy, thanks for clueing me in that you’re a raging Trek geek. And I thought *I* was bad, back in the day, when I went to Trek conventions (never you mind how many) and owned ridiculous amounts of books & memorabilia and even had a PHONE in the shape of the original 1701 that sounded the red alert klaxon instead of ringing. (And that was damned funny, when people were at my house who hadn’t heard it before, watching them jump in alarm when the phone rang! Wish I’d kept that phone…sure, they sell them on eBay for $20 and up, but it would only have been cool to have it now if I’d kept the one I had back then.)
Also on my way home, I had a few thoughts about people who apparently believe that “pro-choice” means that any choice they make is okay. I have a few bits of advice:
- If your enviro-destructo SUV is too wide to drive up the narrow lanes of SE Division or Hawthorne, DON’T DRIVE ON THOSE STREETS.
- If your person-powered vehicle cannot even average HALF of the traffic speed (which is a bit UNDER the posted speed limit of 25mph), DON’T DRIVE ON THAT STREET.
- NEVER TURN LEFT ON SE DIVISION. If you do, you’re not only an asshole but endangering everyone else in your vehicle and on the road, and probably criminally insane.
- Parking with 2 wheels on the sidewalk, in a no-parking zone, and then sprinting your fat saggy-panted self across the busy street between moving cars is not only illegal but PHENOMENALLY STUPID. And should be punishable by at least a few stinging slaps to the face, if not actual whippings.
I know there was more I wanted to add, but just now I’m too tired to think of it. Basically what it all boils down to is: there are WAY too many choices toward attitudes of entitlement in this society. I mean that people feel entitled to drive their car halfway into the lane already (safely & legally) occupied by another vehicle because of their choice to drive a gigantic SUV down a street with narrow lanes, and they feel entitled to hold up traffic for several blocks because of their choice to ride a much-slower bicycle in automobile traffic, and they feel entitled to break “little” laws because of their choice to make their life more convenient at the expense of others’ convenience or even safety.
I’m going to keep on doing my best to make choices that are responsible, considerate, and SANE. One of those choices, at some point very soon after the demonspawn graduates high school, will include moving out of the city, to a place where others’ choices have much less of a daily negative impact on my life. Until then, I suspect my cuss-word vocabulary will become quite extensive.
Ah, sweetheart, if I didn’t already ♥ you, I would after this little screed.
Heh. I’d have sent you that one, but it was all about knitting instead of crocheting. *chuckle*
I don’t know about Oregon’s laws, but in California, anyone over 12 is *required* to ride on the streets, not the sidewalks. If there’s no bike lane, they have to be in traffic.
But they’re not required to ride on a street posted 45mph in the middle of the lane, are they?
I bike quite a bit, but I don’t think I personally own the street because of my amazing connection to Earth.
People do need to be more aware of bicyclists. I have had a couple friends clipped by assholes who didn’t even stop. But we make our societal rules for the masses, not the outliers. Our infrastructure is (sadly) set up for automobile traffic nearly to the exclusion of other. We pretty much require a car just to be able to maintain gainful employment and get the basics we need to live (shopping). Holier-than-thou bicyclists aren’t helping anyone, much less their own cause when they make a nuisance of themselves.
The bicyclists in Portland are SPOILED ROTTEN. The city mandates bike lanes on a huge percentage of the city streets, and they even have “bike boxes” which are areas at right-turn lanes painted bright green where cars aren’t allowed to pull up to the crosswalk so that bikes can get ahead of them for red lights and right turns. There’s no bike license or usage fees; therefore the bicyclists are not paying one cent for these privileges. Currently there are 14 of these boxes on city streets; each cost $4,000 to install and the city spent another $2,500 to film a video on how to use the bike boxes, which is available online at the City of Portland website as well as on YouTube. That’s nearly $60,000 in taxpayer dollars spent on just the bike boxes — heaven only knows how much has been spent on bike lanes and paved bike-only paths (several cross the city) in Portland.
I’m constantly almost being run into by bicyclists who are breaking traffic laws — whether I’m in my car or on my scooter (which I guarantee would injure me if they hit me) — because they don’t stop for stop signs, won’t bother stopping for red lights on traffic signals if they don’t see any traffic coming, and they completely DO act like they own the road. They’re especially bad on the residential side streets that don’t have traffic signals, only stop signs (which they blow through). They aren’t required to have any insurance, so even if they are at fault in a collision and the other person is injured or their property is damaged, they get off with — at the most — a traffic citation & small fine.
Bicyclists whine constantly about bad auto & truck drivers, but above & beyond their own constant breaking of traffic laws, this past year has seen bicyclists physically attacking cars and their drivers. One man who was assaulted is a bike activist who was in his car on a family outing, and when he yelled at a bicyclist for breaking traffic laws, the guy piked up his bicycle and beat the man’s car with it, then punched the driver!
To those who say these are the exceptions and not the rule, let me tell them they haven’t spent any significant time driving in Portland. I’ve seen exactly TWO bicyclists stop for a stop sign in the last year, and both times it startled me so badly that I almost couldn’t believe I’d seen it happen.
Sounds like Berkeley (where I’m working these days). You watch the bicyclists repeatedly run traffic signals and you can feel the aura that’s transmitting something like “traffic laws are for CARS”
The thing that gets me the most about bicycles slowing down traffic on a busy street is that that particular street is bordered on either side by several streets that are completely residential and have little to no auto traffic. Those are the streets that I cut over to when I’m on my scooter, because it saves me a ton of time in avoiding the congested areas, and I do see plenty of bicycles going down those streets. But no, that particular jerk had to back up auto traffic for several blocks so he didn’t have to go a whopping 1 or 2 blocks out of his way to find a street with virtually no traffic and the same exact speed limit.