Bike Snob NYC on sharing the road

BikeSnob NYC waxes snobbish (or more accurately, he's reacting to snobbishness) with regards to sharing the road with motorists. You know... the motorists who have an attitude that they own the road and cyclists have no business on the road, particularly if it inconveniences said motorists.

Sometimes, when drivers violate my space or demand I get out of the way, I simply ask them, "Why?" The answer is always the same: "I'm in a car, and you're on a bike." Ah, of course, that's an excellent reason. See, they don't give cars to just anybody. Only really important people get to drive. Plus, you've got to take a test to drive a car, and it's so hard that they don't let you do it until you're in your teens. Never mind that these people are usually driving cars with Blue Book values significantly lower than what our bicycles would fetch on eBay; either that, or they're driving some really expensive contraption that any sane person would be embarrassed to be paying for, like a Cadillac pickup truck, which allows you to look like an idiot at the country club and at the ranch. The fact is that a motor vehicle is a "major purchase," and major purchases are how people express their self-importance and project it to the rest of the world. But they're not important, they're merely self-important.

(From the book Bike Snob, P.102. I love the part about the Cadillac pickup truck. That notion is almost as absurd as the Porsche SUV!!)

Previous BikeSnob excerpts here and here.

(Apologies if your internet reader doesn't do well with my hard-coded color.)