The Sterling Stage, 6134 E. Hwy. 290
City Needs to Put Cycling Issues at the Forefront
RECEIVED Thu., April 9, 2009
Dear Editor,
I always recall the first Critical Mass ride I ever attended. Somewhere on Congress a motorist tried to run over (or appeared to try to run over) a cyclist near the back of the group. The kid escaped injury, but his bike was mangled around the front tire of the vehicle, a gold Jeep Sahara. Against the protests of a passenger, the driver came out swinging. Outside of his car, blindly attacking a dozen or so Critical Mass kids, he naturally took a few lumps.
But it's what happened next that's remained with me: After the hunter became the hunted, he limped back into his Jeep and tried to speed off. Only, the kid's bike was still wrapped around his front tire. So instead he accelerated into an uncontrolled arc across a wide Congress intersection at 25 miles an hour or so, finally striking a car waiting at an oncoming red. A female driver leaped out and opened a back door to check on an infant in the backseat of the car (as far as I could tell, both were unharmed, thankfully). The man who struck her was now speechless, but when a group of us rode over to check on the struck driver, she excoriated the cyclists, whose presence, she obviously felt, was the prime motivator behind the wreck, and not the insane rage of the Jeep driver. The Austin Police Department then picked one rider at semirandom (ironically, the guy most cooperative in attempting to explain what had just occurred), charged him with blocking a thoroughfare or something, then took him away. (All of this was caught on tape and presumably resides on the Internet somewhere.)
What I learned is this: Critical Mass is important, but it's also divisive. It's a fun, empowering participatory event that also incited near-fatal road rage on my very first tour. We desperately need improved bicycle infrastructure just as urban centers are increasingly finding cycling preferable to hunting out parking spaces. But we also need improved services. I don't expect sympathy from rush-hour commuters, but I do expect the APD to cease operating as if cyclists live with a level of privileges and liberties below that of both motorists and pedestrians.
The city needs to put cycling issues at the forefront of its agendas, if for no other reason than to prevent Downtown from becoming a rush-hour battleground.
I always recall the first Critical Mass ride I ever attended. Somewhere on Congress a motorist tried to run over (or appeared to try to run over) a cyclist near the back of the group. The kid escaped injury, but his bike was mangled around the front tire of the vehicle, a gold Jeep Sahara. Against the protests of a passenger, the driver came out swinging. Outside of his car, blindly attacking a dozen or so Critical Mass kids, he naturally took a few lumps.
But it's what happened next that's remained with me: After the hunter became the hunted, he limped back into his Jeep and tried to speed off. Only, the kid's bike was still wrapped around his front tire. So instead he accelerated into an uncontrolled arc across a wide Congress intersection at 25 miles an hour or so, finally striking a car waiting at an oncoming red. A female driver leaped out and opened a back door to check on an infant in the backseat of the car (as far as I could tell, both were unharmed, thankfully). The man who struck her was now speechless, but when a group of us rode over to check on the struck driver, she excoriated the cyclists, whose presence, she obviously felt, was the prime motivator behind the wreck, and not the insane rage of the Jeep driver. The Austin Police Department then picked one rider at semirandom (ironically, the guy most cooperative in attempting to explain what had just occurred), charged him with blocking a thoroughfare or something, then took him away. (All of this was caught on tape and presumably resides on the Internet somewhere.)
What I learned is this: Critical Mass is important, but it's also divisive. It's a fun, empowering participatory event that also incited near-fatal road rage on my very first tour. We desperately need improved bicycle infrastructure just as urban centers are increasingly finding cycling preferable to hunting out parking spaces. But we also need improved services. I don't expect sympathy from rush-hour commuters, but I do expect the APD to cease operating as if cyclists live with a level of privileges and liberties below that of both motorists and pedestrians.
The city needs to put cycling issues at the forefront of its agendas, if for no other reason than to prevent Downtown from becoming a rush-hour battleground.
Ben Reed
