Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Vehicular cyclists are the fucking worst. I find that they fall into two groups:
Either way they're almost 100% athletic white men who for some reason never picked up on the fact that cycling in a car culture is a near-perfect analogy / example of what it's like to be a marginalized minority and a first-hand demonstration of privilege. Instead they're defenders of the status quo - By way of their own athletic, gender, or monetary privilege - All the way to their bloody meat crayon deaths. They're that one asshole who shows up to the community board meeting about a new bike lane that will make cycling accessible for children, the elderly, and any person in between who is more risk-averse or less athletic than they are in order to speak against it "As a cyclist". Because to them battling for your life in traffic, being on the bleeding edge of death, breathing in truck exhaust from the shoulder of a stroad is a gatekeeping measure. They're masochistic elites, they rake pride in the danger that they put themselves in so much that they'd deny accessibility to anyone else unwilling to accept that danger.
Gordon Ramsey is an example of someone in the dentist group. A few years ago he very nearly got meat crayoned by a car while cycling in the US. He didn't provide the details of the crash but it was obvious from his injuries that he'd been hit from the side by a car or truck and likely went over the hood. His public plea in revealing this wasn't that the US needs to make roads safer for cyclists, or more accessible to people who don't have a group of equally wealthy friends to peloton around a foreign country with, maybe separating cars from cyclists so that the two may never conflict. His one and only adamant request was that we all wear a helmet. Cycling is wasted on these myopic asshats.
Oh bother, I've gone and ranted again.
Have you been outside of the first world recently? Here in Mexico, cyclists are mostly old people with backpacks filled with tools on their way to fix a sink.
No, but I'm speaking specifically about US culture. Sorry, I know this community is international and so I should have stated that.
Hell even where I am about 60% of cyclists are kids. This is some basic internet strawman if I've ever seen one.
Someone has never been to Europe.
I have though. Go on, I'm interested to hear about the demographic difference.
17% of adult males and 36% of adult females use a bicycle to get to and from a work or education site. 45% of all Danish children bike to school.
Oh, I was not referring to cyclists in general. I was referring specifically to cyclists who gatekeep access to cycling by restricting it's recognition to sport athletics only, or opposing cycling-specific infrastructure. Europe certainly does have a much higher percentage of daily cyclists than the US but that is not what I was talking about. Though since you have more women cyclists, I imagine some of them do inevitably behave in this way.
Ah. Yes. Gatekeepers of any sport are cunts. Only excusable when safety is involved.
Cause and effect. When you make cycling a challenge, the only cyclists will be the most radical/motivated. If we had the infrastructure to make cycling safe and easy, many more casual cyclists would exist. Europe proves that
“If you build it they will come”
As it is, building it doesn’t even work so well because we are so starved for opportunity that so many “bike paths” are overwhelmed by pedestrians that also never had options
Yup, it definitely has snowball potential in either direction. Build more infrastructure, incentivize more advocates. Build less infrastructure, incentivize more privileged subcultures.
Hey, i fall into the dentist group! But i totally advocate for bike lanes, and i'm not white...
There are dozens of us at the local critical mass ride!!! I make it a point to show up in my ridiculous spandex gear to show people the dentists aren't all assholes. Also, good spandex is really comfy.
Why the hate?? Yeah i sunk a lot of money into my hobby, but thats what people do. People spend tens of thousands on camera gear, gaming rigs, etc. Why hate on others' expensive hobbies?
I'm actually not that rich, but living car free and biking every day has allowed me to allocate a lot of money towards my hobbies. Cars are a total money sink... 10yrs ago it was around $6k/year TCO. I'm sure it's more now...
You should put an additional qualifier on your dentist description.... Carries their $20k bike on top of their $80k SUV. Drives 2 hours out of the city just to ride around for an hour...
I didn't say that all dentist-types are vehicular cyclists, just that all vehicular cyclists seem to fall into those two groups. One-way taxonomy. If you advocate for accessible bike infrastructure, good!
I'm actually white and male, myself. Fit, though I'd stop short of claiming athletic. But for me, taking up cycling was an eye-opening first hand example of disperate privilege. Both in how cycling is treated compared to driving, and how level of access to cycling itself changes depending on who you are. While I was already primed to understand social justice, cycling is a small way for white bros to really emphatically experience it along one vector, even if temporarily. Some of us gatekeep it as a result, but like you or I some of us use that experience as motivation for advocacy.
I'm living proof that a helmet will do nothing to protect your pancreas; sure it coulda been worse, but as an 8yo kid I had a tough recovery because they wouldn't give pain medications until the last minute, but I guess that's just another rant for another place and time.