Friday, July 30, 2010

1301 Camo Bike

There appears to be a problem with taking the licenses away from people who get repeated DUIs. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for it. Countless lives have been saved by taking these menaces to society off the roads.
Except they haven’t totally been taken off the roads.
Now they’re on bicycles.
The drinking bicyclists don’t seem to get bike protocol. Like basic safety rules. Sure they’re anti-social. But some things are just basic self-preservation.
I don’t expect them to shave their legs or anything. Or even wear spandex bike shorts and colorful knit shirts. But I also don’t expect what startled me into nearly killing one the other day.
It was dusk. It was a country road. And he was wearing camo. I kid you not. He was coming right at me on a curve too, and I nearly hit him.
Camo on a bike.
Dude, you want to be seen by cars when you’re on a bike. They’re two-ton hunks of metal hurtling at you at 40 miles an hour.
You’re not sneaking up on them...
Poor dew-ee dummies. They used to be menaces on four wheels. Now they’ve found ways to be menaces on two wheels. Like riding, weaving, and generally driving recklessly on sidewalks.
When you’re on a bicycle, the idea is to share the road and follow the rules you would ordinarily follow as a driver of an automobile. I guess it’s no surprise the guys who couldn’t follow rules when they were driving cars wouldn’t be following rules for bicycles now.
It just seems a little more unsettling when a bike with a basket full of Mad Dog is about to crash into you on the sidewalk.
Pedestrian and bicycle accidents seem so much more intimate somehow.
America, ya gotta love it.

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