Pragmatik

In a world where we are running out of oil and where there are traffic and road problems that seem like they will never go away, maybe part of the solution is to stop giving every idiot with a birth certificate and proof of a residence a mf-in driver’s license.

Take the stupid bitch we have all heard about recently who killed a cyclist, apparently on purpose(?), while drunk behind the wheel. She was driving on a suspended license from getting caught driving shit-faced before. Wtf? Yeah, I would apologize for my nasty language, if you could tell me a better term for this, this thing.

See also the hag bitch whose car killed the police officer here in Baltimore on New Year’s Eve. It’s still not clear if she was driving(?), but why the hell did she still have possession of her car? She was arrested for not showing up in court for a drunk driving charge after the death of the police officer. They should have taken her car away when they caught her drunk driving, no? They should have gone looking for her when she didn’t show up for court. What is the lesson? That you can drive drunk in Baltimore, not show up for your court date, and you can just go about your business — unless someone kills a police officer with your car, at which time they will drag you out of your house, cameras filming your old saggies falling out of your shirt and your fried hair blowing in freakishly warm January air?

I would give up all the nice new bike lanes we are getting in Baltimore, the signs, the bike route markings, the reminders to drivers to not kill us. I would give it up if the money got spent on keeping scum like this off the road. I mean it.

Besides, I almost got hit by the same idiot who also almost caused an accident with cars this weekend — twice. Because he didn’t know where he was going. Because the fact that he did not know where he was going somehow excused him from darting out into traffic (almost nailing me), cutting people off to change lanes, stopping, darting back out of traffic (causing me to skid hard, and, damn, thank the gods I lock my arms when I stop like that, lest I would have gone over the handlebars).

I would hope that, with time, people think more about who else is on the road. But they won’t. They don’t even think about other cars. This jackass yesterday caused a problem for more cars than the two bikes he nearly wrecked.

Most* people are stupid when they are in cars. I know. I was, too. I used to sit in my car and plan out stuff to buy, think about people I hated, listen to music and drive around the country to forget problems I did not want to think about or deal with. I would sometimes get aggressive, blowing the horn at morons in Carbondale who did not stop at STOP signs, apparently one of only five people in that town who used the car’s horn. I honestly drove several times when I was too damned tired to be driving and probably put myself and other people at risk in doing so. But I was in a car, so I thought I was unstoppable. I don’t know; maybe cars only made me a jackass.

I hope peak oil means less idiots driving around in metal boxes that can kill people. We have lots of roads cyclists can use. How freakin sweet would it be to ride up 95 to Boston for my 40th birthday, in a dozen years? I like the idea of riding across the country on former highways. Sort of evokes something from Fight Club and puts me in mind of a hot-air balloon propelled by bike, so I could ride to Paris and look great when I got there. All buff and stanky and really in the mood for a nice cafe’ au lait.

[*Calm down. I said, "most."]

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Cycling, Green, Personal, Web, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.