Never been a GM fan. On the topic of car vs bike, my town is set up in a weird way so it actually only takes me about 5 minutes, on a bad day, longer to ride my bike to school than to drive.

Sometimes I wake up late and try to save time by driving the 10ish km (9ish by bicycle) to campus (in outer suburbia, but very congested nonetheless). I don't even have to get on school property before I realize my mistake (15 min driving + 15 min parking and walking vs 20 min cycling). I don't think this plan has ever worked.

LA Times: GM Pulls Advertisement that Offended Cyclists
https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/mone...cyclists-.htmll

When I was in college, I lived 12 miles (and about 1200 feet of elevation gain) from campus. It never even occurred to me that it might have been possible to bike it. So instead I drove a series of $1000 cars that generally lasted about a year each.

GM can go to hell, I don't plan on buying any of their vehicles because I don't like them...I prefer Japanese imports. I did some research and found out that GM was responsible for destroying the public transit in the early days. Shame on them. If a GM salesman came knocking on my door , I would just slam my door right in his face.

What do you expect from Government Motors. That's why I bought a Honda last year when I had to replace my Ford. The Ford was a good vehicle but the repair expense started to get ridiculous.

I share your sentiments.
Maybe we can all write GM and tell what we feel about the ad?

When GM can build a good car for the price of a good bicycle . . .
$40,000+ ( + gov't help) for a Chevy Volt . . . really???
Should not have bailed those schmucks out.

Awesome. That's almost exactly what I was going to post, but you said it for me.

Riding around your suburban cul-de-sac with your toddlers on tricycles does not make you "a cyclist."

Lots of money in cars, little in bikes. Advertisements push how great they are. No ads for bikes, so it's hard to compete.

Plus, high school students, which these college kids were a few years back, hate bikes--they all think cars are cool.

But, the college campus is where a bike is better and everyone knows it. Heck, walking is better than a car. GM is an idiot for trying to show that it's embarrassing to bicycle when car parking on large campuses are typically further away from classrooms than the kids dorms or apartments.

I think we're all over-reacting a bit here. Buying a new car after finishing up one's schooling, whether it be high school or university has been a rite of passage and part of the American dream for decades; they're just tapping into that. One can debate whether that should or shouldn't be what one aspires to, but I'd say it's a safe assumption that at some point in nearly everyone's young life, there was a car that they coveted, that they wanted so bad they could taste it (and go into debt for it). As bike commuters, that's not where we're at, but to be dismissive of someone else's aspirations is no more fair than for others to be dismissive of our aspirations, even if the end game is different. Furthermore, we look like the uppity a-holes that everyone already thinks we are by "being insulted" by some silly ad campaign. I'm not selling any of my bikes tomorrow to buy a car, GM or otherwise. I'm not so easily swayed by Madison Avenue that I have to find my self worth within their ideals or marketing schemes. Laugh it off.

I think that ad is just an indicator of what's happened to our society. I saw this today and thought it summed things up rather nicely:

The reason I commute by bike is that, in an urban environment, it's much faster. Lights back traffic up; intersections and bridges are choke points for cars.

Agree. I have a 15mile commute across a large area of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and its just as fast, if not faster on bike depending on traffic for the day.

This is politics, and doesn't belong in the commuting forum.

My bad- I thought this whole thread was about politics. Guess I've been reading between the lines.

What does? An overwrought sensitivity to every slight, imagined or otherwise?

It seems that Giant has just replied with this https://road.cc/content/image/46042-g...lity-does-suck

Now, here is an ad idea after looking at the Giant ad. I think it is truthful and yet parodying the GM ad:

A picture showing a passenger in a truck/SUV is stuck in a traffic jam looking enviously at a cyclist who just zipped by (possibly with a wave from the cyclist). And the tagline could be "Traffic Jam Sucks", "Time is better spent moving" or something in line of that (literary is not my strong suit).

what, that we are now an idiocracy and the person with the sign is hoping to be its presidential nominee in 2013?

if you want politics, come to P&R, if you dare.

Obama the magic man and his evil car company, Guberment Motors strike yet again. Give billions to failing solar cell companies just like he did to Guberment Motors and then undo what little good may have been done by encouraging already jobless and in debt to the eyeballs college students to spend what little of their parent's money or college loan money they have left on a modern day Chevy Vega. Yep, then go hang out on Wall Street and defecate on the sidewalk while whining about rich people.

When the guberment gets involved in running our lives then you get such nonsense, elections matter. Four more years of this kind of thing and you will be required to purchase a GM car along with your health insurance or go to a re-education camp and if that does not straighten you up, well, off with your head. Teach you to ride a bicycle instead of a cage.

I get a lot of malware warnings from that site, so here is the image...



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Weshigh Facebook took the second link down? ha! limpid lizards those folks.

[QUOTE=[url]https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?p...50980333_n.jpg[/url]

The same people who wanted Americans buying ever-larger SUV's the past 15 years did not bother to produce an appealing new car for most Americans since the Saturn, 20 years ago. I like the Nissan commercial which shows an older couple using their compact SUV to go for mountain biking with another couple.