Why We Don't Ride Bicycles To Work
Because we don't want to be roadkill.
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A century and some ago when the modern bicycle was invented, its ease of operation and high speed (compared to a horse and buggy, anyway) brought about the Golden Age of Bicycles where everyone had or wanted to ride one. Sepia-tinted photographs record grandly-dressed Gilded Age types participating in the bicycle craze. It was bicycle riders demanding better surfaces that led to American streets being paved, it didn't matter to horse-drawn carriages and there weren't enough car owners to insist on spending money that way.
Then the Model T came along, and ever since then lovers of bicycles have fought a long retreat. For all of our lives, a bike has been an enjoyable pastime but not a practical mode of transportation.
This isn't for want of trying, particularly by the modern nanny-state and environmental Leftists. Bicycles create no emissions! You can fit loads more of them on a road than of cars! You can't travel as far on a bike, thus limiting nasty suburban sprawl! And so on.
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| A daydream for environmentalists. A nightmare for commuters. A speed bump for drivers. |
Thus we find the power of government, and your tax dollars, being used to support a mode of transportation that the overwhelming majority of Americans reject.
Bike trails made from ex-rail lines that might otherwise carry passengers at high speed! Already-jammed streets narrowed to create bike lanes! Free parking for bicycles! Will subsidies never cease?
Yet there is one compelling and unimpeachable reason why the bicycle is not a serious mode of practical transportation. As the Washington Post reports, the Green Party nominee for Maryland's U.S. Senate seat just illustrated it:
A 30-year-old Green Party candidate for the U.S. Senate died late Monday night, less than two days after she was hit by a car while riding her bicycle in the Largo area, authorities said. She had been critically injured on Route 202 about 5:30 a.m. Sunday...
Pettigrew was hit by a sport-utility vehicle traveling near the intersection of Campus Way. State police said the driver apparently thought she had hit a deer or another animal and realized what had happened only when she arrived home and found Pettigrew's bicycle trapped under her car. [emphasis added]
Maybe, just maybe, America's drivers aren't simply obsessed with destroying Planet Earth when they choose to drive an SUV rather than pedal a Schwinn? Maybe, just maybe, they'd rather not end up like so many of Obama's friends: squished under the wheels of something a hundred times more massive than they?
When it comes to highway combat, there's no substitute for a sheet of steel between you and somebody else's horsepower. Ms. Pettigrew, alas, learned this lesson too late; but her unfortunate demise as she held true to her convictions is an example to her survivors.
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What does Chinese history have to teach America that Joe Biden doesn't know?
Why wasn't she riding on a bike path? I'm still not convinced that the driver of the car didn't know she had hit the cyclist.
@davey
Suppose you're hurrying home from work and you hear a thump. Are you going to stop or are you going to assume you hit a deer or a dog or something? You're going to keep going; who needs the hassle? At the very least, the cops'll delay you for 2 or 3 h ours getting home.
At least she called in when she found the bicycle.
Obviously getting hit by a car when riding a bike the cyclist is at a much higher risk.. but how much of a higher risk is it versus getting viciously T-boned by a tank when driving a car. People die on the roads all the time in all manner of conveyance. I think the real reason people don't want to ride a bike is because they're lazy, and I can't blame them, I don't want to arrive at work sweaty and need to shower and I don't want to have worry about the weather. I think maybe, just maybe, this article is a little opinion piece with very little research done.