Dont Hate Me Because Im a Bicyclist
It took me a while to understand that this was the order of things. I had always assumed that everyone understood the benefits of choosing to ride a bicycle instead of car, bus or other motored auto. But my blissful ignorance was short lived after spending a summer commuting to work. First it was my friends and relatives commenting on bicyclists and their terrible traffic habits. Then I was subjected to road rage in two separate incidents while riding on a - well off the path - county road. Bring this subject up in the cycling community and you will get a cyclone of activity around others experience's and some with physical scars to show for it. Bring this subject up in one of the most bicycling friendly cities and you get something else. Something that I still do not understand.
In the last week Madison passed a law to make it illegal to open a door without checking for oncoming traffic. If you open your door and impede an oncoming bicyclist or other traffic you will be fined $ 100. Seems like common sense to me and actually I was surprised this was not previously the law. Cut to the Wisconsin State Journal's article on this new law and the fury of comments it generated, not specifically on the law itself, but a pouring out of hateful rants on cyclists in general. Many of these comments included threats of physical abuse and gross hatefulness. Check out the comments in the latest story about the Dooring ordinance.
On Tuesday March 24th 2009 a local radio show broadcast on WJJO featured a segment on bicyclists in the Madison area. While I was not a listener to Tuesday morning's WJJO show one listener described the event as "The morning hosts talked about how they loved to roll down their windows and yell things at the lame bikers like "nice spandex you fairy!"" Supposedly It went on for a few minutes. Randy Hawke (WJJO PD) randy.hawke@wjjo.com and I swapped 3 or 4 emails in which I asked for the transcripts for Tuesday mornings show. Lets just say Randy was less than helpful.
Now since I was not part of this morning WJJO program I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt as there are two sides to every story - that was until I was forwarded a link to an earlier program featured by WJJO. Unfortunately the link was soon removed from the site but fortunately someone uploaded a copy to this site. (Audio Removed - See current article) There are some serious comments in this audio segment which should anger most bicyclists
If anyone witnessed the WJJO radio show from Tuesday's AM program please tell us what your take was on the program.
Being a bicyclist is not a crime.
What's Related