Kevin Hoover speaks

What follows is too important for a link. Kevin Hoover, editor of the Arcata Eye—and a cyclist—has given us permission to quote his current editorial. Herewith:

Eye Editorial: Berserk bicyclists – April 29, 2009

How many times have you had to slam on your brakes to avoid colliding with an ablivious/arrogant bicyclist plowing through a stop sign? How often have you held your breath as a biker pulling a trailer containing a child sailed past a stop sign and into a busy intersection? When was the last time you hoped the bicyclist wending and weaving around pedestrians on the sidewalk would manage to maneuver around you and your kids without impact?

Chances are you’ve had some or all of those experiences. And your extra consideration in averting imminent collision with errant bicyclists will often as not be met with dirty looks and the rigid digit. After all, you aren't a bicyclist and therefore don't merit respect.

The once good-natured Critical Mass bike rides – intended to show cyclist solidarity and reclaim the streets from auto dominance – are these days comprised of surly bikers with fashionable terrorist-mimicking scarves over their faces yelling obscenities at drivers and flipping off everyone in sight.

If the biking community wants an explanation – not a justification – for the enmity and discourteousness some vehicle drivers give them, they need look no further than the example their least responsible members set.

Unsafe biking is endemic in our college town, and it is taking a steady toll on its practitioners, with injuries ranging from road rash, cracked skulls to last week, death.

Every year a fresh crop of university students comes to town and has to be taught responsible comportment from the ground up. And then there are the homegrown traffic law-scofflaws. Some listen and learn some don't.

Among the latter category would be the six bicyclists with cracked heads who have been taken away on gurneys over the past two years.

Unfortunately, many hit the ground (and other things) before figuring out that they should follow traffic law and common sense safety measures. One of them isn't going to get another chance.

Humboldt State University, the bike shops, the City and local bicycle advocacy organizations must redouble efforts to put bicycle safety front and center in the biking community’s consciousness – right up there with establishing new trails and bike lanes. It's not unreasonable to suggest that any further amenities the bicycling community is demanding be withheld until it shows some interest in getting its safety act together. Why reward arrogance and lack of cooperation?

You can’t save people from themselves if they’re determined to behave self-destructively. But some bike riders are amenable to reason, and it’s incumbent on anyone with any influence to try to drum safety into bicyclists’ heads – while they still have them.

Why, you ask, does Kevin have a hair up his ass over his fellw bicyclists? Here's why. Needless to say, both the injury and the death might well have been prevented if these free spirits had bothered to wear helmets. Two down, in one day. How many more will it take before we mandate helmet use (attention Ecovelo readers)?

Living in one of the few bike-friendly communities in America has its downside: we get more than our share of nasty bicycle accidents. When a cyclist was killed riding on the far right shoulder of Rte 299 last summer, the cycling community boiled over and demanded a meeting with the authorities. We had had it with arrogant motorists who think they own our roads. We had had it with the sneering hate radio hosts who target cyclists. We were the green warriors on wheels. Later for the gasoholics.

The Arcata police chief, The CHP, the district attorney, CALTRANS (highways) and a local trucking instructor gave us their sympathies. Then we got an earful. Cyclists and motorists were telling themselves the same horror stories. Yes, it turned out that WE are terrorizing motorists, especially truckers. The Arcata police chief put it this way, " at any hour of the day I can look out my window and watch half a dozen cyclists blow through the stop sign at one of Arcata's busiest intersections." Semi-trucks, we learned, take no less than 300 FEET to come to a stop from highway speeds. The truck drivers have learned to expect...utter chaos...from cyclists. The trucking instructor, himself an enthusiastic cyclist, put it this way: "Bikers routinely ride on and off curbs, through lights and into oncoming traffic. I tell my drivers to think of cyclists as out of control three year olds. Be ready for anything."

Yes, we need driver education when it comes to cyclists. It's our road too and we have a right to use it unmolested. We all remember the gas prices last summer and we've seen the waistlines at the local mall. America needs us. But...we're never gong to get the respect we crave from the motoring public if we insist on an utterly hypocritical double standard when it comes to traffic laws. We may not even manage to stay alive.

The answer? Emulate this rider.