Bicycle Fixation Weblog
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05/20/2008: "Blame, Bikes, & Bullshit"
Recently the thread on my favorite forum wound its convolutions round the topic of Cyclists Who Behave Imperfectly and Make Us All Look Bad, and somehow came up with the knotted conclusion that motorists might just be angels if fixie punks didn't run stop signs.Before I could finish foaming at the mouth enough to type intelligibly, Hugh Flynn came back with an intelligent and well-expressed retort, which I implored him to post on a blog so I could link to it. This he did, and now I shall.
My favorite paragraph:
People, in general, want everything they do to be as easy as possible, and they never want to be to blame for anything bad...ever. People who drive cars are no exception to that rule. With the The Scofflaw Cyclist straw man in place, car driving people have a target for the frustration they feel over the situation THEY have created, but for which they are completely unable to accept the blame. Most motorist frustration seems to be the result of not being able to get from point A to point B easily, and that's simply the result of traffic congestion. Traffic congestion, one might be surprised to discover, is caused by one thing and one thing only - too many cars in one place at one time. Scofflaw cyclists have nothing to do with it. While it runs counter to human nature to sit in traffic and think "I can't really get frustrated with this since I am, after all, as much to blame as every other motorist out here for this traffic jam," blaming Scofflaw Cyclists for the frustration that driving seems to engender is a bit far-fetched.Read teh full screed in its slightly-sarcastic glory at Hugh Flynn: Cyclist Blames Self: Film at 11
Nice new blog, Hugh--keep it up, and thanks!
