AdrianFly

It's a silly article written by a silly clown.

Hilarious. He should write for MAD magazine.

He's like Al Jaffee but instead of a cartoon he spouts ridiculously long sentences with all incorrect words placed in absurdly deranged order.

Either that or I'm having a stroke.

howeeee

I dont believe it to be the same guy. The guy on the Medved show never addresses recreational bikers, he mostly is aiming at accomadating bicycle commuters. He says there are 750,000 bicycle commuters in the entire country and to spend money on keeping these "obnoxious" bikers safe is a waste of money and a rip off of tax payers. Also went on to say 750 of these bikers go on to get killed every year, claiming the rate of death is very high.

Atophy

Are any of you folks rich ?
I may be buying a 3k trike, but I saved up for that by sharing rent with 5 other people and paying off all my outstanding debts... I work at Walmart for petes sake Cycling isn't a rich mans hobby, proof of that is in the number of 50 dollar bikes that fly off the shelves at your local one stop shops.

dynodonn 

Most of those 50 dollar bikes end up collecting dust at someone's residence, ridden at a park once or twice a year. The bike will eventually end up in a recycle bin being that the bike is basically a throw away, with another being purchased, perpetuating a vicious cycle (non pun intended).

Grillparzer

Hardly! But one of the many beauties of bicycling is that it transcends financial and social classes. I work in a very, very posh hotel in D.C. Our guests transportation choices vary from bicycles to armored Suburbans. In the past I got a real kick of directing an owner of a Weekly Standard competitor to the nearest bike share station.

I posted the article originally because it is rare to find such a diatribe against bicyclists in a national magazine. What I've come across before have been nut job letters to newspaper editors or professional cranks crying totalitarianism while filling space to make a deadline for their weekly column. The author of this article certainly isn't the first and I don't think the second. Caldwell is respected, seemingly political moderate, and astoundingly wrong. While ignorance also transcends class and politics, the source of this example surprised me.

ItsJustMe

I have a $1000 bike, but most not-rich people have cars that cost more.

People at astronomy events start to grouse about it being a "rich man's hobby" when they hear about scopes costing $5000, but as one guy in our club says, he just drives his old car an extra 2 years and that pays for a new scope every 5 years or so.

People have no problem spending $5000 to $50000 on a car that probably will last no more than 10 years, perhaps no more than 3, and will have little resale value. But spend $1000 on a bike so you can get something reliable and reasonably pleasurable to ride and you're a "rich man"

genec

Heck spend $3000 on a real good bike and you have still come no where close to the costs of a motor vehicle... especially when you calculate insurance, gas and other repairs.

PatrickGSR94

I paid $6,500 for my car in 2001 that I'm still driving today, having put 245,000 miles on it myself. I'd say I got my money's worth there.

I-Like-To-Bike

You sure of that? Any credible support or reference for this besides guesswork, anecdotes, and possibly contempt for those who buy/use inexpensive bikes?

genec

How about the huge amount of bike sales across the land while regular bike ridership is at something like 1.6% of modal share. No wait, obviously no one is counting the riding cyclists.... yeah, that's it.

https://nbda.com/articles/industry-ov...-2012-pg34.htm


So of the other 359 days, it is highly likely that those bikes gathered dust somewhere.

Some 18 million bikes were sold last year... where are those riders?

noisebeam

An AZ Republic editorial writer mini-ed:

https://www.azcentral.com/opinions/ar...mute-work.html

"...I learned that even on Phoenix’s bike-unfriendly streets, bicycle commuting is faster than you may think and infinitely more fun (and exciting) than driving."

I-Like-To-Bike

Where do your stats indicate that Mucho$ road bikes or mountain bikes sold to recreational riders by LBS's are ridden anymore frequently than $50 bikes sold to the hoi polloi?

genec

They don't. Such stats don't exist. In fact bicycle statistics are mostly made up... there is no reliable method to find out how much cyclists in any area ride or how many cyclists ride.

The only reliable stat is dead cyclists... all other bicycle stats are projections of polls or surveys.

I-Like-To-Bike

...or projections of an individual's wishful thinking, guesswork, fabrication and/or anectdotes as recently posted about the life cycle of inexpensive bikes sold by WalMart and similar stores.

Atophy

I think a bicycle is probably seen as a vanity item more than a practical one, by non-cyclists at least..

dynodonn 

That was my thought exactly, there were close to 14 million new vehicles sold in the US in 2012, and I saw a share of them in my locale, and I agree, with 18 million sold, where are all the bikes?