What piece of everyday athletic gear, applied in urban areas to the buttocks, turns normal people into raging, homicidal, suicidal, antisocial maniacs?
asserted
piece → apply → maniacs
Yes, bike lanes indicate where cars mustn’t go, but a) drivers aren’t looking for bicyclists; b) drivers don’t care about bicyclists; and c) drivers occasionally think it’s funny to terrify bicyclists by coming into their lanes.
asserted
it → indicate → lanes
When not bicycling, urban riders are normal and law-abiding.
asserted
riders → bicycle → ?
They’re your neighbors, your co-workers, your friends.
asserted
They → ’re → ?
They pay their taxes.
asserted
They → pay → taxes
They buy Girl Scout Cookies.
asserted
They → buy → Cookies
They vote.
asserted
They → vote → ?
But put them on a 10-speed and they morph from John Q. Public into Evel Knievel.
asserted
they → put → Knievel
They speed, they swerve, they run red lights, they go the wrong way, and if you don’t like it, they flip you the bird.
asserted
they → speed → bird
They’re … free!
asserted
They → ’re → ?
And everyone else has to lump it.
asserted
everyone → have → it
The same anti-growth, anti-car, anti-common sense mentality that animates socialism also leads to the anarchistic desire to ride in traffic.
asserted
that → animate → traffic
Socialists, who likely overlap with urban bicyclists, may end up repealing the laws of free enterprise and private property.
uncertain
who → overlap → enterprise
But they will not succeed at repealing the laws of physics.
asserted
they → succeed → physics
To wit: If a vehicle hits a bike, the vehicle wins.
asserted
vehicle → hit → bike
And if another bike hits your bike, you both hit the pavement, and then you both get hit by cars.
asserted
you → hit → cars
To paraphrase Michelle Obama, physics don’t play.
asserted
physics → paraphrase → Obama
Everyone has a story about a friend or relative who got hit or killed while riding a bike on city streets.
asserted
who → have → streets
Yet bikers ignore those outcomes.
asserted
bikers → ignore → outcomes
Norm Macdonald’s joke comes to mind: “When you see a traffic accident, you think, ‘That could never happen to me.’
uncertain
That → come → me
That’s true, unless you got to the same spot 90 seconds earlier.”
asserted
you → ’ → spot
Biking on city streets is crazy enough.
asserted
Biking → bike → streets
This means sneaking into the street in the middle of the night and then painting new bike lane lines.
asserted
This → mean → lines
A given city’s traffic engineers have declared a street unsafe for bikers.
asserted
street → give → bikers
Yet the lines painted by excitable, oppositional, law-defiant bicyclists are actually putting their fellow bikers (and pedestrians) at mortal risk.
asserted
lines → paint → risk
In their bravado and foolhardiness, the danger they create means nothing to them.
asserted
they → create → them
The latest example is Boston, where you’d think people would be smarter.
asserted
people → think → ?
Apparently putting on a bicycle helmet in a city reduces your IQ by at least 50 points.
asserted
putting → put → points
A bicyclist was killed recently, and the response of the biking community was to paint new bike lanes.
asserted
response → kill → lanes
A city counselor has suggested that those repainted lines, near where a biker had been killed, led to a person riding a scooter getting hit by a car.
uncertain
person → suggest → car
You nearly got another person killed.
asserted
person → get → ?
But it’s not just Beantown.
asserted
it → ’ → ?
In 2009, residents of Williamsburg, a Brooklyn neighborhood, complained that people were getting hurt by speeding bicyclists who had no regard for pedestrians.
asserted
who → complain → pedestrians
In response, the city removed the offending bike lane.
asserted
city → remove → lane
Urban hipsters immediately repainted the bike lane.
asserted
hipsters → repaint → lane
Same thing happened in Spokane, Washington, in 2017.
asserted
thing → happen → 2017
The city removed a bike lane and some urban Einstein repainted it.
asserted
Einstein → remove → it
Same thing happened in Cleveland, Dallas, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and (no surprise) San Francisco.
asserted
thing → happen → Francisco
It’s not just Americans who are willing to put themselves and their fellow cyclists at risk.
asserted
who → ’ → risk
Cyclists in Mexico City, Toronto, and even those Mensa members over in Riga, Latvia painted new lines.
asserted
Cyclists → paint → lines
…and 10 more, not listed.
The Aporia
