I SING THE BICYCLE ELECTRIC: A few years back, a city motorcycle cop popped me with a $500 ticket for running a stop sign on my bicycle at not quite seven in the morning. In my own neighborhood, no less. Not a single other vehicle was on the road. I saved my breath. He had one of those cop faces.
Early the next morning, I came to the same intersection. It was still crickets and tumbleweeds. I ran the stop sign. Lightning couldn’t strike twice in two days. It did. The same cop pulled me over. Again. This time, he let me go with one of those baleful, reproachful looks he reserved for people too stupid for words. It wasn’t so much an act of compassion; it
was contempt.
I mention this to note that city cops and their comrades in the Sheriff’s office have been going after scofflaw bike riders in the past couple of weeks. The real target, I’m pretty sure, are the e-bike riders that have gotten the South Coast’s collective underpants into an intractable knot.
As a repeat recidivist myself, I say it’s about time. Long overdue.
I say this also as a loud and shameless shill for the e-bike. I celebrate the machine as nothing less than the missing link when it comes to getting people out of their cars. When I see kids riding down the Valerio Street hill, I don’t cringe in anticipation of the roadkill they are about to become; I celebrate the fearless display of joy and fun they are having. Maybe, I think, there’s hope.
I was not surprised to be greeted with an email this Monday morning bearing the slug line, “BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS.” Enclosed was a link to a study examining 62,000 bicycle and e-bike collisions across the country over the past seven years and concluding kind of the obvious: 14-year-olds are freaking idiots. It’s part of their
genetic wiring.
Other media outlets are missing the point. They’re focusing instead on “the surge” in accidents involving e-bikes and the disproportionate spike in severity compared to non-electrified bike riders, who, by the way, account for fully 58,000 of these collisions. You don’t need to be Einstein to understand that speed combined with mass equals greater impact and more broken bones. And undeniably, the number of broken bones is piling up. I would point out — in knee-jerk rebuttal — that if you take 14-year-olds out of the equation, the findings of this study are dramatically less drastic.
Here’s the real take-away. Always wear bike helmets. Always have your kids wear them too. Yes, they look dorky, but so too does brain damage. Drooling is never sexy. Parents, don’t buy your kids crotch rockets that go 50 miles an hour. Your kid is 14; what’s your excuse?
It’s the height of stupidity to tell other people how they should feel about anything. I, however, have never stopped trying. I figure, sooner or later, I’ll get it right.
Here goes. For the past couple of years, Santa Barbara has been held captive by a cabal of angry old coots who are addicted to being in the state of perpetual apoplexy. They call this disorder apoplexy nervosa for which, sadly, not even Jerry Lewis has found a cure. They have endlessly hijacked public meetings about the future of State Street, using these public forums as the megaphone through which to rail endlessly about the scourge and menace of e-bikes. (And yes, God will strike me dead with an e-bike.)
When there are no public hearings to hijack, they commandeer what otherwise seemed like it was going to be a perfectly pleasant dinner conversation. Perhaps if these people — and they are everywhere — got out and played more golf (perhaps at the Muni Golf Course before it gets converted to affordable housing), they would be more suffused in a spirit of equanimity.
If you need to be apoplectic about something, why not light your hair on fire about the “surge” in pedestrian deaths because Detroit insists on building bigger and higher trucks and SUVs and we — as premeditatedly stupid accomplices in our own undoing — happily and stupidly buy these trucks and SUVs.
Since 2009, we’ve seen hood heights “surge” from 30 inches to 40 to 50. This reduces drivers’ sightlines. Pedestrians go unseen. Whammo. With the lower hood heights of yore, their knees might have taken the brunt of the blow. But today, it’s their internal organs. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the United States averages 7,080 pedestrian deaths a year. Of those, the institute estimates 700 are due to the higher hood heights. By contrast, the Consumer Product Safety Commission reports there are 30-to-45 e-bike deaths
a year.
The New York Times says pedestrian fatalities have “surged” — I use this word because it appears to be the verb of choice in all news articles on the subjects at hand — by 75 percent since 2009. These bigger, heavier vehicular skyscrapers cost about two times the price of a “sedan.” For Detroit,these mutant trucks are where the money is. For consumers, these vehicles allow you to feel safer and more macho at the same time. Little wonder that sedan sales have tanked. In 2017, Ford sold a million of them; five years later, it
was 100,000.
Where are all the outrage junkies when you need them? Where is all the apoplexy about Big Auto killing granny in the crosswalk in order to make a few more bucks selling gas guzzlers that will kill all the polar bears? I’ll tell you where. Out shaking their stupid fists at 14-year-old nitwits on crotch rockets their parents should never have bought them.
The blood is on my hands? Do the math yourself. Forty-five deaths or 700?
In the meantime, I’m working very, very hard to stop at signs. What do you think I am? Stupid?
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