Why Car Drivers with a Clue Support Bicycle Infrastructure

Photo courtesy of therozblog via Flickr

Imagine what it would feel like to accidentally maim, cripple for life, or kill a bicyclist (daughter, wife, mom, son, husband, dad, teenager or kid) with your car, regardless of who got the traffic ticket.

On top of that guilt, imagine the potential for an emotionally and financially devastating lawsuit.

Oh, and don't forget the deductible on your car insurance.

I've had to brake hard to avoid hitting a cyclist, day, night, rain, or shine, many times in my life. As a cyclist, I've been on the receiving end more times than I can count as well.

A bicyclist can be difficult to parse out against a cluttered background and can be moving five times faster than a pedestrian. It's just physics.

Any motorist hoping that bicycling will be made illegal has a screw loose. This is a case where it would be much better to join them rather than fight them. Motorists should be the most enthusiastic supporters of any infrastructure that gets bicyclists out of their hair.

And did I mention all of the parking that bicyclists free up?

Click here--to see a list of articles and to subscribe to future posts or subscribe by email:

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Carnage in the bike lanes streets

(Photo credit coffeego via the Flickr Creative Commons license).

Two recent articles have motivated me to do another biking post. First up is this one, from Science Daily

Despite the wide-spread attention paid to the importance of wearing helmets, helmet use did not change during the time period of the study, and more than 33 percent of 329 bicycle injury victims had a significant head injury. Even more alarming, the number of chest injuries increased by 15 percent and abdominal injuries rose three-fold over the last five years. “We were astounded by that data,”

“We’re talking about injured spleens and livers, internal bleeding, rib fractures, and hemothorax [blood in the chest]. Those kinds of injuries are reflected by an increase in injury severity score,” he added.

The study was done in Denver, apparently a very bicycle friendly city. I would hate to see the data from Seattle's Harborview trauma center.

In a nutshell, increased bike traffic without improved bike infrastructure = carnage. The only way to motivate politicians to prioritize bicycle infrastructure is to motivate their voting constituencies. The snarling car drivers should take a back seat. Life is a power struggle but it never hurts to hold the moral high ground when attempting to plant a meme.

The second post was from Treehugger. The picture of the little girl who lost both of her parents is just heartrending.