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Saturday, May 24, 2008

Bike to Work?

Shelby Wood (not Green) writes a column (yes Green) for our local paper, the Oregonian. Today's column was about biking to work. She writes:
My Top Three Reasons for Not Riding a Bike to Work:
  1. Fear of being killed or maimed by a car or truck.
  2. Fear of being killed or maimed by something I do that causes me to slam into a car or truck.
  3. Fear of arriving at work, or back home after work, stressed out by spending 30 sweaty minutes trying not to get killed or maimed by a car or truck.
She goes on to discuss her views on the subject.

I used to ride my bike to work a couple of times a week. I did it for at least a year, maybe more. I gave it up for all the reasons she mentions. I don't know whether I was ever afraid, I don't recall anything really scary happening to me, and I wasn't riding downtown. I was riding mostly on side streets or in designated bike lanes.

But I looked at the situation: me, riding a bicycle next to multi-ton blocks of steel traveling at 3 or 4 times my velocity. It just did not seem like a prudent thing to do. It's kind of like guys who stick a gun in the front of their pants. It might be perfectly safe, but geez, if something did go wrong, it would be really bad.

I don't ride my bike hardly at all anymore. I don't think I will be doing any more riding on paved roads. If there is even a chance there is going to be a motor vehicle on the same road, I don't want to be there on a bicycle.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Charles,
Thanks for the link to my column. I like the gun in the pants analogy. Not sure I could've gotten that one past my editors.
By the way, my name is actually Shelby Wood, and my column/blog is called PDXgreen. Although Shelby Green has a nice ring to it.
Thanks again--
Shelby