I’ll bet you he stops for red lights.

So why can’t you?

For the past few weeks, swear to God, I’ve been meaning to stop on the way to work at one of the many, many, many intersections where, every morning and every evening, cyclists go rocketing through red lights and into busy intersections.

Not all. Not every. But enough so I actually notice it when a biker stops when they’re supposed to. Enough that when they’re not barreling into busy intersections, Manolete-ing through a vortex of cars, just so as not to have to stop and toe-touch the hated curb, it catches my attention as uncommon.

Enough so that had I waited near a prime cross-street during the morning rush, I could have photographed several such head-down-oblivious-fucktards every minute or so, for as long as I cared to wait.

I know a couple and they are what I can only call Bicycle Baptists (or perhaps, if they’re style is prone instead of seated upright, one might fairly call them Recumbamentalists.) True Believers. The World was Created by the Cycling God and His divine plan is for everyone to ride, walk, or get the fuck out of the way.

Saturday I sat in traffic watching two gentlemen in my rear-view mirror on Ashland boom through one red light after another without slowing down. On Sunday, this silly bint went sailing through a stop sign right in front me. She was seated on her vehicle very erect, rolling hands-free, one arm folded across her chest, her other hand holding a cell phone to here ear. She looked for all the world like she was sitting at her kitchen table, gossiping away on her cell, eyes and thoughts far, far away...except she was sailing helmetless and unaware through traffic on a busy Sunday morning.

When she noticed where she was and that I existed and that plunging along she had missed my bumper by a couple of feet she looked scared and stunned. I was sitting perfectly still, but to her mind it must have looked as if I’d just beamed in from Alpha Centauri.

Want to bet that if she had clipped my inert automobile, she would have found some reason to be furious with me?

And these are not in any sense aberrant events.

I don’t mind someone taking a Hollywood roll through the stop sign at an uncluttered intersection, and I don’t really care if a cyclist uses the wrong side of a non-busy street, or runs the wrong way down a One Way. Cycling is a healthy actively, it’s fun, it’s efficient and it’s a responsible, renewable, green form of transportation which is why it is especially irritating that so many cyclists seem to be such fucking morons, and that when they get called for being fucking morons, they act like pricks.

It’s what killed Socialism, kids. Great on paper, but evangelized by too many insufferable assholes and self-righteous control-freaks.

I never did take that picture, but imagine my surprise when I saw this in the paper today (Which I will excerpt) complete with a rebuttal letter (which I’ll reprint in toto just to be fair).

Now that’s what I call service!

Bicyclists not free to ride as they please
A police crackdown in the city's Lakeview neighborhood carries a warning: Traffic laws that apply to cars also apply to bikes.
By Kelly Kennedy
Tribune staff reporter

July 20, 2005

When bicycle police stopped Jacob Meehan at Roscoe and Halsted Streets in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood, he immediately knew what he had done.

"I was going the wrong direction on a one-way," Meehan said.

"No, we caught him going through a stop sign," the officer said.

"Oh," Meehan said.

...
Members of Mayor Richard Daley's Bicycling Ambassadors, an educational outreach group, were also in Lakeview on Tuesday, passing out bike safety information and maps showing routes with bike lanes or wide streets. They'll be out again in Lakeview from 1 to 9 p.m. Wednesday.
...
Bicyclists in the neighborhood agreed they tend to ignore the rules, and that it could lead to injury. Police decided to start on Halsted Street because business owners had complained about too many bicycles on the sidewalks, Chicago Police Sgt. Phil Greco said.
...
Greco said a lot of bicyclists do not know that only children younger than 12 may ride on sidewalks or that the same laws that apply to cars apply to bicycles. But some of them do and ignore the rules.

Just after scooting through a red light, Josh Zaffino said police had no reason to patrol the neighborhood because most of the bicyclists are regulars who know the rules.

"Granted, there was a red light back there," he said, "but there weren't any cars."

As he spoke, another man drove his bike past on the sidewalk.

Zaffino said he sometimes rides his bike on the wrong side of the road, but that sometimes it is hard to get over to the correct side when traffic is heavy.
...
And bicyclists need to be safer in general. Jennings said seven bicyclists died in 2003 in Chicago. "We want more people to bicycle," she said. "We aren't here to scare people, but they have to be safe."
...
Then he said he has a tendency to drive through red lights on his bicycle.

"I guess it's too much like being a pedestrian, so I don't think about it," he said. "It's probably a good idea to give out tickets."

That article elicited the following letter from Outraged Citizen, Steve Rosen.

Ticketing bicyclists

July 20, 2005

I've had my car broken into numerous times, been burglarized, vandalized and robbed at gunpoint, so it is a great comfort to me that the Chicago police will be dedicating manpower to writing tickets to bicyclists, ("Bicyclists not free to ride as they please," Metro, July 20).

Our reward for less pollution, less traffic and a healthier lifestyle is to worry about a rolling stop on a bicycle that will result in the same fine as when a car does it. I wonder if I'd feel better about the alleged bike routes in this city if I'd ever seen a ticket written to someone parked in the bike lane or people who pass on the right, nearly killing any bike rider in the lane. It's a comfort to know that the mayor's office on bicycling is looking out for us, not by creating safe bicycle passage or enforcing bike lane violations by cars, but by dedicating the police force to chasing us down.

I hope the special force keeps an eye on the mayor. Rumor has it he rides his bicycle, and I assume, being the law-abiding citizen he is, that he will come to a complete stop at every stop sign and if he errs, he will be charged.

And this is why some, bad people fantasize about cyclists being centerpunched by Mack trucks and being horribly smithereened. In slow motion.

I don’t – I know exactly what happened when a car hits a cyclist and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone – but Mr. Rosen has distilled down into a few paragraphs exactly why some cyclists are despised.

You operate a vehicle, Mr. Rosen: if you don't like the bargain, don't take it. And frankly it’s not the lawbreaking, that gives people that nails-on-the-chalkboard sensation when they hear this kind of talk. It’s the lawbreaking PLUS your sense of aggrieved, oh-so-put-upon victimhood PLUS handlebar-thumping hectoring...all with a heaping helping of snarky, petulant whining slathered generously over the whole mess.

So instead of bitching about the evil petro-conspirators and how we’re all out to get the humble, noble cyclist – upright or recumbent – lets have a few facts.

Cyclists in the City of Chicago have it better than they have in a lot of places, and much better than in most major metro areas.

Perfect? No, it’s not, say, Boulder, Colorado, but then again our major industry isn’t university students.

There are 350 bicycle events in the City this summer.

One of those events is called Bike the Drive, where the shut down Lake Shore Drive for a couple of hours and let cyclists have the run of the place. FYI, I think Bike the Drive is a terrifically cool idea.

There are 100 miles of bike lanes and 50 miles of bicycle paths, with 125 new miles of lanes and 250 miles of signed routes planned.

Chicago already had more bike racks than any other city in the country, with plans to install a total of 2,000.

The buses are rigged to accommodate bikes, as are the "el" trains.

There are public parking facilities in virtually every public facility.

The Mayor, who certainly has a lot of faults, is, in fact, a cyclist.

In case you haven’t been reading the papers, the City is broke. For all the fast budget-talk ramadoola the simple fact is the City has apparently pissed away its allowance on hiring politically-connected drunks and dead-people, so now it can’t find two-nickels to rub together. And for all the legitimate public-safety concerns, ticketing is also source of revenue. And especially when a City is broke, it takes generating revenue very seriously -- so seriously, in fact, that they’ll now boot your car after three (3) outstanding tickets. So if you think cyclists are being afforded special, vengeful attention, or the City is somehow being lax on drivers, well, let's just say that opinions like this makes you look kinda stupid.

Finally, there are close to 4 million people in the metro Chicago area, all trying to get someplace in a hurry. The roads – half of which are under construction on any given day -- have to allow for the following: cars of every make, model and description, from mini Coopers to Rolls Royces to 40-wieght burning shitwagons. Buses and freight haulers. Dickheads in SUVs. Professional and amateur movers. Garbage trucks. One million taxis. Horse-drawn carriages. The tin-jobbers in rusted-out pickups piled 3-rickety-stories-high with old fridges, screen-doors and folding chairs. Streets and San guys. Fire trucks. Those CST VanBulances that haul senior citizens around and are always double-parked. Actual ambulances. Pizza guys. The Tribune’s delivery trucks playing Deathrace with the Sun Times’ delivery fleet. The soda and beer haulers making their morning deliveries...and always good for a case of something cold if you’re very fast. Milk trucks (yes, there are still a few.) Oblivious roller-bladers. Segue-nerds (OK, I envy them, but they’re still nerds.) Serious motorcyclists. Fey, weekend, yuppie motorcyclists. Crotch-rocket-idiot-helmetless-rich-kid motorcyclists. The stolen grocery cart brigade who collect pallets, or the scrap that the tin-jobbers missed. Limos. Stretch limos. Stretch-Hummer-UberPhallus-I’m-embarassed-we’re-countrymen-Limos. Trains: commuter, long-distance-passenger and freight. Joggers. Gawkers. Mommies with buggy caravans. Dog walkers. Marked police cars. Unmarked tactical unit cars. Paddy wagons carrying Hired Truck former city employees and current convicts off the federal prison. School buses. Charter buses full of Cardinals fans. Drunks. Street preachers. The Ghost Tour Bus. The Untouchables Tour Bus. Geek Squaders. Assorted minor superheros. Film crews. Action newsmobiles. Pam Zeckman chasing errant Aldermen. Hookers. Spies. Consular vehicles. Those weird street cleaning things, that have been around since the 1930’s and were modeled after WWI tanks. The homeless. Roger Ebert.

And Oprah and her entourage.

If you want to Doppler as quick as thought over mile after unbroken mile of open road, without slowing down, great. That’s why God made Montana. Go and enjoy.

If, however, you want to live and operate your vehicle alongside all the other vehicle operators in the third largest, busiest city in the American Empire -- one that is already about as bike-friendly a gotham as you’re likely to find – quit behaving like a spoiled little child, shut up, man-up and stop at the fucking stop lights like the rest of the grown ups.