Now, I'm not young anymore. And our kid is no longer a baby. But she could have been talking about me! I bike our boy to school almost every day. In a trailer.
What this Giver of Thorns fails to understand is that the woman she saw was probably not biking for recreation. That many people rely solely on their bicycles and their feet for transportation. That motorists - however careful those drivers might be - also share the road with inattentive drivers. That pedestrians also have to watch for distracted drivers.
Inattentive drivers are a danger to us all.
We Stringers understand that not everyone is comfortable transporting children in a trailer. We get it. Really. It took us a long time before we were comfortable bringing the Little Dude on bike rides. But we are committed to helping normalize nonmotorized transportation. We want to see more people getting around town by bike. And we want drivers out there to get used to seeing us.
Really, we just want to share the road.
What can we do to protect ourselves from dangerous drivers? Look both ways before crossing the street. Wear our bike helmets. And fasten our seat belts.
It drives me crazy that many people think nothing of belting a child into a motor vehicle and sending it hurtling down the interstate at 80-plus miles an hour - a speed at which an accident is highly likely to result in serious injury or death. Put that same child in a bike trailer or bike-mounted child carrier to ride across town in a safe manner and those same people clutch their pearls and become weak in the knees. And where do we draw the line? Should I not teach my son to ride a bike because it's too dangerous? What about walking on the sidewalk? Should we live in the basement because a meteoroid could fall on our house at any moment? I think the point that Joni is trying to make is that she's a shitty driver and shouldn't be allowed on the road with us - whether we're traveling by bike, car, or foot. Fucking reprobate.
ReplyDeleteIt's preposterous the way people think: "for your own safety," you should change your behavior so the people who are a danger to each other and every one else are free to continue their irresponsible behavior without having to worry about you. What the????? Why not just make texting & celling illegal (like it SHOULD BE)? Ah, but there are still folks who don't use seat belts and who drive drunk and so on. I hope you take the opportunity to educate on this thorny issue!
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