To arms, cyclists! The war is on!

“In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage.” 
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

Bike Joust by Karl Addison

In this morning's Post, Transportation writer Ashley Halsey III writes a response to a rash of recent columns about cyclists that have appeared over the past few days, in particular this tirade from Courtland Milloy which followed this one by John Kelly. And this piece by Rachel Sadon. And this one by Sarah Kaplan. And this one by Petula Dvorak. Looks like a busy time around the water cooler for the editorial staff at the Post. I can assure you, the Comments engine at the paper must be at near capacity.

These commentaries follow a firestorm created by an ill-considered tweet from NPR's Scott Simon, which prompted this extremely well articulated response from Carl Alviani on Medium which referenced a retort tweet from BikeSnobNYC. Suddenly cycling editorials are coming out of nowhere!

A casual observer might be forgiven for concluding from the histrionic rhetoric that there is a war in this country between motorists and cyclists. In some senses there is a war; if only for funding, for space, for equal protection under law. It's an engagement reminiscent of the great American Civil War, only now pedestrians are fighting for exclusive rights to the sidewalks, cyclists are fighting for equal rights to the road, and motorists are fighting to preserve their right to continue to slaughter over 30,000 people per year in what they term "accidents". Thankfully, the fight is so far limited to the Op Ed pages of newspapers and blogs with the occasional intrusion into transportation funding meetings. Oh, and of course on YouTube, the world's new public square. 

It would be easy to be discouraged by the insane vitriol spewed by people on both sides of this debate, but I have to say I find it somewhat promising. First, it's good to know that the most significant event the Op Ed columnists of the world can think to write about on a given morning is that goddamn bicyclist that jumped a stop sign on the way to work. Or that had the audacity to ride on the sidewalk in the extremely small area downtown where that behavior is illegal. I'd much rather read about that than about actual tragedies that happen when cars ride on the sidewalks and people actually die rather than just being annoyed and possibly inconvenienced. 

And that there are so many of these rant-a-torials must be an indication that cycling has reached a certain critical mass making it worthy of comment. Cyclists are now having such an impact on the comings and goings of our fellow citizens that we warrant being hated, which is a clear sign of significance. At least we are now sufficiently annoying that we must be reckoned with. And now that drivers are pissed off, maybe they'll want to do something about it, like vote to increase transportation funding so the bicycle commuters don't have to share the roads with their laughable Humscalades they bought to chauffeur their kids to school. 

Maybe now that all these nasty cyclists are forcing drivers to repeatedly press the brake and gas pedals and maybe turn the steering wheel more often, they'll have no alternative but to recognize that there are other human beings in the world, people with different priorities and lifestyles; fellow citizens whose admittedly conflicting rights need to be taken into consideration. Nah... what am I thinking? They'll just keep bitching and spending their ever-shrinking transportation dollars on their ever-expanding superhighways so we can all spend our entire, pointless lives sitting in gigantic vehicles going zero miles per hour on Interstate 95 between Springfield and Fredericksburg. Goddamn bicycles!