🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3a9jk6$9kh@bashful.cc.utexas.edu>, orb@bashful.cc.utexas.edu
(Norman Richards) wrote:

>  What causes them to hate bikes, to me at least, seems to be envy.  

No, it is the arrogance of some (not all), bikers who think the traffic
laws don't apply to them.

>but biking has it's perks.  One of which is its added maneuverability
>in that a biker can occasionaly choose a shrot-cut which saves him
>time.  Cars don't have that option.  Tough.  

If the short cut involves riding on the sidewalk, or between the lanes of
traffic that are stopped at traffic lights, or running lights when the
traffic clears, or any one of a number of other "short cuts" I've seen
bikers take, then you are breaking the law, plain and simple.  It is this
flagrant, arrogant disrespect for the law that angers me.  Greater
maneuverability does not confer greater privilege.  My V8-powered
Thunderbird can easily top 100 mph, but that doesn't mean I'm allowed to
indulge that ability.  Neither are you allowed to indulge your greater
maneuverability if it means breaking the law.

For that matter, driving also has its perks.  I can get across town in
about 15 or 20 minutes by taking MoPac or I-35.  It would take a biker at
least twice that long (probably more like three or four times), to go the
same distance (about 15 miles from my house in Oak Hill to the JJ Pickle
Research Campus, formerly BRC, where I used to work).  I also don't sweat
like a pig on a hot day, freeze my butt off on a cold day, get wet when
it's raining, etc.  And if I ever get in a bad wreck, I've got over a ton
of steel around me to absorb most of the energy of the impact and protect
me from being scraped along the asphalt or being crushed by the other
vehicle (unless it is a really big truck).  Both transportation methods
have their advantages and disadvantages.

>If you choose to drive
>a noisy, polluting, money-sucking, tension-raising lazy method of
>trnasportation then you get the standard transportation package.  

Looks like you're running out of useful things to say because you're
starting to name-call.

>  I don't see why people have such a hard time accepting that.  If 
>traffic is heavy and I pop onto the sidewalk and cut accross a field
>to another street with better throughput - what is wrong with that? 

It is against the law.

                                ++Don Nash

Internet: D.Nash@utexas.edu     The University of Texas System
THEnet:   THENIC::DON           Office of Telcommunication Services