Originally Posted by
Oleanshoebox
It seems I did a poor job of explaining that I understand both sides of the coin-but implicit in these arguments you both present is that the rights of the motorist supersede those of the cyclist. Sure-water fights fire better than fire-but these kids have a right to be pissed off-and to express that passion and fervor. I applaud their audacity.
They do have a right. But so does a 2 year old complaining they can't have ice cream before dinner. All this does is piss the parents off (the driver) and causes more problems in the future (more pissed off drivers, that probably weren't annoyed with cyclists to begin with).
I, like many other cyclists have been nearly killed plenty of times by drivers. I've been run off the roads countless times, I've been honked at, stuff thrown at me, and harassed. But I prefer to handle this in a mature fashion. Yelling back at them, blocking them, and "getting back" at them isn't going to win them over to your point of view.
Originally Posted by
urbanknight
Furthermore, why piss off tons of people when only a small fraction of them are the A-hole drivers that deserve it? Punishing many for the actions of few is pathetic.
Sorry if my words seem too strong, but I am personally offended by any cyclist (CM or otherwise) who promotes a lack of respect towards other people who may or may not have dished out the same in the past.
I feel the same way about riots. It makes absolutely no sense. For example the LA riots. Why would you destroy your own neighborhood? To punish your neighbor for something someone else did? In this case the neighbors would be fellow cyclists. All this does is piss more people off that are going to take it out on other cyclists.
There are soooooo many better ways to get cycling known to the general public and advocate better driving and not treating us like crap. I'm working with quite a few other people at our school and we've(not me personally but our president and other officers) not only talked with people on campus but with city officials on providing better places for cyclists to ride, commute, park their bikes, as well as getting us known and help advocating safer driving and treating cyclists like humans.
One of our big goals is to turn the city around and make it one of the bike friendliest places in California. We've already been in the local newspaper, on the radio, and the city is starting to put in new bike lanes all over the place. There's a major road that I remember riding down that's like a freeway. They put a rather wide bike lane and the roads are nice and smooth now, as well as in other places. We also have a few events that have been going on in the city that we have advertised and helped at.