The Ultimate Arrogance

Biking home from work a couple weeks ago, a couple of guys in an Olds with a ‘God Bless America’ sticker ran me off the road. They both got out of their car near a busy intersection and one ran towards me shouting ‘Get a car, you homo!’

There seems to be something about driving that can turn reasonable people into impatient, even obnoxious jerks. I definitely notice the tendency in myself on the rare occasions I’m behind the wheel. For a small group of individuals though, driving appears to trigger sociopathic tendencies. I’ve been run off the road many times. I’ve had trash thrown at me. A mom revved her car behind me while her young kids flipped me off from the back seat. I’ve even been head-butted - ok that was as a pedestrian.

A column on Monday reported that an angry swarm of Critical Mass bikers attacked a minivan while children were screaming away inside. No journalistic inquiry into the provocation. No eyewitness commentary. Just the driver’s account of a vicious mob acting inhumanely. Maybe it’s my own experience, or just say, common sense, but I was quite skeptical of this scenario. Over the last couple days a broader picture has emerged and the details are not surprising to me. A reporter at the Bay Guardian was present at the incident and gives his account

A driver gets angry and impatient after getting stuck in Critical Mass and tries to drive through the crowd (which is stupid, illegal, and dangerous). To prevent injuries, the standard practice in such cases is for riders to place themselves and their bikes in front of the car. She hits said bicyclist (sure, maybe not hard enough to produce an injury, as you pointed out, but contact is contact) and then keeps driving forward. The rest of the bicyclists urge her to just stop driving, please, which she refuses to do because at this point she’s agitated and indignant. They pound on her windows, pleading with her to stop driving into a crowd of hundreds of bicyclists with her deadly object. Pretty soon, a bicyclist loses it and smashes her window

And here’s a television interview with some women who also witnessed the incident.

This kind of reportage and the actions of this driver and many others stem from the same asinine, but thoroughly ingrained idea: a car has the absolute right of way on the road. Bicyclists and pedestrians in America make up a fraction of those on the road but suffer 11 to 36 times higher fatalities than car occupants. And yet there remains this perception by some that, golly, drivers have it tough out there. Hooey.

People are so bent on getting from point A to B as fast as possible they neglect the repercussions of their behavior. Unsafe streets, riled up commuters, pollution. The automobile has been a major negative force in public health, climate change, urban planning, not to mention sucking away the funding and infrastructure for decent public transit and high speed rail. Now is not the time to crack down on “rogue” bikers, but a time to push for education and real policy towards improving the safety and health of everyone. A city with more bikes, more pedestrians and for the love of jesus, a better MUNI is something I think most of us can agree is a positive thing.

So to those good ol boys in the Oldsmobile and others, I say: Get a bike, you 20th century troglodyte. It’s good clean fun.

The title of this post, by the way, is from friend to the people, Willie Brown, who shook his Italian-tailored cuff at the bikers in Critical Mass back in the day.