Dear Drivers,
What are you doing? You’re sitting up, high and mighty, in your $30,000 car, trying to get to your destination as quickly as possible. Or at least that’s what I do when I drive back home. The whole point of a car is to make the journey from Point A to Point B as effortless as possible, yet you still take the extra effort to honk at, speed past, sideswipe, and delay bikers.
We are like the ants on your picnic blanket. Yes, I get that it drives you nuts that we are there, but this is our habitat too. As much as you want to squash us, it’s just not right.
I started seriously biking about four years ago and now it is my primary method of transportation. It’s cheap, sustainable, and healthy. I wear a helmet, I have a night light, and I obey road laws and use hand signals. Still, I’ve been hit by two cars in the last three weeks.
By law, bikes are vehicles too. It is technically illegal to bike on sidewalks, so let’s clear up that driver grievance right now. If you hit a bike it’s still a vehicle crash. Would you be so eager to hit a car you didn’t like? I didn’t think so. Just because you probably wouldn’t get hurt if you slammed into a bike doesn’t mean that it’s okay.
According to a study done by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Association in 2012, over 49,000 bikers are injured each year due to car collisions. Some 800 bikers are killed each year, 69 percent of which are killed in urban areas.
Listed among the top causes for these car-related injuries is the opening of car doors. Drivers: Please check your mirrors before opening your doors. Let’s recall the first of Newton’s laws: an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Bikers are shamed from using the entire lane (although we are allowed to), and bike lanes are located to the right of the lane. Your parallel-parked car is in our territory. When I’m racing 22 miles per hour down a hill, and you open your car door, that’s a whole lot of external force sending me flying into the intersection.
I understand that there are jerky bikers who weave around you at red lights only to accelerate to a whopping 15 miles per hour, but there are a lot more of us who just want to get from Point A to Point B as efficiently as possible. Still, you don’t see us sideswiping or throwing trash at cars.
Maybe it’s because we are more exposed, because we weigh a combined 200 pounds with our bikes while you weigh over 2,000 with your car. Maybe it’s because it’s easier to act aggressively when you’re safely strapped behind airbags and steering wheels and metal going 45 mph.
All that I’m asking is that you respect my safety and I’ll respect yours. There is too much aggression in the world already and it would be nice to eliminate even a small amount of it. Don’t squash ants in their own habitat.
Sincerely,
A concerned biker
