The true face of he who must not be named.
Finally spring has arrived in Philadelphia with a clear signal to all. It's not the first red robin or flower, nor is it the crack of the bat as the Phillies warm up for their first home game at Citizens Bank Park. No its a column from Stu Bykofsky columnist and professional grumpy old man for the Philadelphia Daily News about bicycles and bicycle lanes in Philadelphia.
While the specific nature of Mr.
Bykofsky's column about the 10th St. bicycle lane in
Chinatown and the upcoming bill City Council members are trying to
sneak through again is a separate blog post to be addressed at a
later date. It's the vehemence and unsubstantiated opinion that he
masquerades as fact Specifically his statement
of;
I do have a problem with bicyclists
who ignore the rules of the road to which they are subject as
vehicles under Pennsylvania law. That means stay off the sidewalks,
ride in the direction of traffic, full stops at stop signs and no
blowing through red lights, the last two being things that
nearly every pedalphile does.
It's not just the play on words of pedalphile, that's childish. It's
his unproven and inflammatory statement how almost every cyclists
does not stop at stop signs and run red lights. To which one can only
say; ok Stu prove it. Provide a statically valid study which the
results can be replicated. Or simply set a video camera on a tripod
at a Philadelphia street corner that shows a high percentage of
cyclists actively running red lights and stop signs within a given
period of time. No editing and it must be stamped with a time code.
I'm sure Stu can convince some intern to do this, otherwise he should
stick to yelling at clouds and telling small children to stay off
his lawn.
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ReplyDeleteIt is annoying. I treat red light as red light and I do rolling stops at stop signs--but at my bike's speeds my rolling stops are far slower than most cars in South Philly. I tried a full stop at every stop sign for a week and got tailgated and honked at for it. My belief is that cars don't care when cyclists break the rules, they mostly care about when they perceive that cyclists slow them down. The funny thing is if I was driving I'd be slowing them down far more.
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