🚀 go-pugleaf

Steve Kappes (steve@iphase.com) wrote:

: This thread sure has wide news group appeal.  

Most of these flame-bait idiocies do.  And of course, there are always
the clueless, busily adding MORE groups to the thread.  But enough of
that. Perhaps you should have considered thinning it out?

: I haven't read all of this thread,

Seems you should have done that, too.  It would have obviated your
article. 

: but this bikes dont pay taxes reasoning is really bugging me.  I have two cars,
: one of them gets about 17 mpg.  I'll bet I and most other bikers are covered
: for our road use taxes.

Except that road use taxes are paid on *vehicles*, not for an
individual's use of the road.  Bicycles pay no road use tax.  You and
most other bicyclists (as opposed to bikers, whose vehicles generally
do burn gasoline -- just to prevent a bit of confusion, since someone
added tx.motorcycles to the list) are not covered for your road use
tax in the use of your bicycle on the road.

This is, of course, an irrelevant issue except that someone who
bicycled wanted to claim that they had some 'right' to the road, since
their taxes paid for it.  Of course, they were wrong about just which
taxes are 'road use' (too), but that's only as irrelevant as the
initial issue.

: What is it that the bike haters really have a problem with? 

Being trapped behind a bicycle doing 5 in a 45 and watching a big long
string of cars stack up as each car waits their '5 or 10 seconds' to
get by; if you're 20th in line, you just wasted a fair number of
minutes riding your brakes to keep your speed down to bicycle pace.


-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
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Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.