McSweeney’s bringing some hard truths with this one. We could all be doing better.
You forgot to go back in time and tell people that subsidizing the oil industry might be a bad idea.
When the oil and auto industries teamed up to bend public policy to their will, making a system of roads and parking lots that now function as a continuous subsidy and magnificent symbol of the normalization of injury and pollution, you had a lot of options. You could have objected. You could have shifted public opinion. Instead, you weren’t even born yet. And, rather than go back in time, all you’ve been doing is riding to get groceries and occasionally saying, “Please stop killing us.” On the effort scale? 1/10.
Well it kind of has to be satire, since it’s suggesting time travel as the shortcoming, but yeah, it is ridiculous how little care motorists pay to cycles. On the other hand, I’ve met plenty of cyclists acting just as entitled, blowing through signs and pedestrian crossing as though they have the same rights as a car, but for in situations where it’s more convenient, as though they don’t have to obey the same rules. And, of course, the situations where they are completely in the right, but so outmatched by tons of steel that being right only matters to their family in court. Operators of cars and bikes can both be distracted or make a mistake, but only one of them is likely to face life ending consequences in an interaction between the two of them.
Man, cyclists/pedestrians like that crack me up
“The law says I have right of way!”
“Not the laws of physics, so you should still look both ways and be prepared.”
“REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”
I’ve definitely run into my fair share of folks like that, and to a degree I think they infuriated me even more than just-car drivers, since they were making us cyclists look bad as a whole; giving reasons to motorists to hate us all. I totally hear you, and thank you for your thoughts that are right on, about the discrepancy in consequences