BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

I think it's just pot-stirring by the Washington Post. They've found they can really get people riled up by being obnoxious on the subject of bicycles.

Yeah, nothing really new is discussed so I think it's just trying to draw clicks. Even the comments seem rather blasé.

But the real answer is deeper than that.

As soon as I read something like this I have tendency to dismiss the whole article. In my book it shows: 1. Author does not have enough skills to understand scientific articles; 2. Author tries to use emotional busters to grab attention.

"There are times when, as a cyclist, I blow through a red light. I’ve got momentum, I don’t feel like stopping, I’m running late." How is this different from? There are times when, as a driver, I blow through a red light. I’ve got momentum, I don’t feel like stopping, I’m running late. Because I probably see this 10x more often than cyclists blowing red lights.

Complete crap. If that guy got paid anything for that article, it was too much.

I think it's, at its heart, the result of cat-keeping. Bear with me. Cats carry toxoplasmosis, a single-cell parasite which has been shown to change personality and increase reaction time ("Increased risk of traffic accidents in subjects with latent toxoplasmosis: a retrospective case-control study," Flegr, Havlicek, Kodym, Malý, Smahel, BMC Infectious Diseases 2002, 2:11). So cyclists may simply be acting under the influence of the parasite when they run red lights. Makes as much sense as this article's claims.

Oh hell, I'll bite. I sometimes bike like a jag-off. Most of the time not, but yeah, sometimes. I also sometimes drive like a jag-off, against, mostly not, but sometimes. Yes, there can be a little rush of adrenaline to feeling like you made it through and are actually getting somewhere. No, there is nothing cycling specific to that, just a different mix of characteristic opportunities for jag-off behaviors. The fact that I know that I am, sometimes, in-fact, a jag-off, is part of the reason I ride a bike. I'd rather go over someone's windshield for being a jag-off myself than have them go over mine.

Most of the times I go through a red light, I do it because it is safer than staying in the middle of the road at an intersection.

It is inconceivable to me that someone who makes a habit of blindly "blow[ing] through a red light" is still around to write click-bait in the Washington Post, a paper that admittedly features a rather low bar for journalistic quality. (Speaking as someone who reads something or other in the WaPo on a daily basis.) [In muted defense of the media: they absolutely have to fill their news holes. Every. Effin'. Day. (This is one of the reasons there are such things as reporters' bars or "watering holes", as they used to prefer you call them.)]