Thank you for choosing Bicyclists!

Here’s the setup: Brenda in San Diego publishes the typical rant from a legitimately employed and productive member of the motoring public about the unemployed person on a multi-thousand dollar bike and wearing hundreds of dollars of kit invading her private road space. I won’t link to it because you’ve seen it all before.


Santa Cruz traffic

The response on San Diego Craiglist, however, is solid gold.

Dear Brenda,

Thank you for your interest in bicycling and choosing Bicyclists!!! as your source of information. I’ll do my best to address your concerns.

A) Most bicyclists don’t ever want to touch automobiles on their ride. When they do, it’s likely that they’re attempting to communicate something vitally important like, “You almost killed me” or “What you’re doing is very illegal and can result in hefty fines. For your own sake, please be a more law-abiding driver on the road.” We understand some of these nuances in language can be lost in communication (especially while your windows are up, your A/C is on, your music is blasting, and you’re trying to text your boss that you’ll be late because traffic is horrible even though you had the time to stop by the drive-through Starbucks and wait 20 minutes inline instead of walking in and getting your coffee in 5 minutes flat.). We get it, you’re busy!

Read the full essay here.

H/T to Serge, who opines “bicyclists evoke some kind of tribalistic hatred within motorists, an emotion evolved from millennia of tribal living where moral tribal distinctions were necessary for survival.”

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