Comments on A Few Questions

Jesus. So in your eyes the cyclists aren't guilty of anything? It's one thing if it was an empty car they fucked up, BUT IT HAD A PREGNANT PASSENGER IN IT. SO WHAT'S IT GONNA BE ERICA? PREGNANT LADIES OR DOUCHES ON BIKES?

I frequently get annoyed by cyclists - partially because I'm fat and out of shape, but also because some of them ride quite recklessly. However, I always remember that I have the big, powerful, air-conditioned machine, and I am capable of inflicting much more damage on them than they are on me, and act accordingly - which means (at least in my case) cautiously.

It sounds like a self-important asshole in the Subaru to me. Throw the book at him/her.

Now there's the ECB I was expecting!

Nothing impartial about her journalism, is there?

The bitch is back!

"journalism" I'd hardly call it that ECB is the Bill O'Riley of the Stranger.

@1 the pregnant lady is a red herring. The driver was not headed to the OB ward of the nearest hospital. He was headed to dinner. Pregnancy in any case is no excuse for driving a car a few blocks, and it's a stinky red herring smelling bourgeois reflex to think so.

I'm on vacation in sunny lake-rich North Idaho. Try that shit over here or in Eastern Wa with these bubbas and all the handlebar heads will get run over by Dodge Ram pickups which will proceed to back up and do it again.Critical Assholes.

When Critical Mass members are cited for blocking traffic, I think that I'll start to give a crap.

oh wow you knew ecb was gonna come in and whine her ass off. hey erica, i don't think you pay much in road or gas taxes at all. i pay loads more. get out of my way. and as far as throwdown incidents go, the cops always focus on the instigators as they should. and those would be your precious cyclists. citizens of the US are allowed to defend themselves from attack and these clowns were attacking him. but you aren't interested in that are you erica cuz commies are always right aren't they?

@6 "Pregnancy in any case is no excuse for driving a car a few blocks, and it's a stinky red herring smelling bourgeois reflex to think so."

Wait, what? Bourgeouis reflex?

Erica, I am completely with you on this. I also think that Critical Mass is a bad bad idea that does not help anyone. It doesn't excuse the actions of the driver - but blocking both lanes of traffic on a narrow street, in a pedestrian/bike friendly neighborhood seems bound to incite anger and alienate potential allies.

Also, drivers don't even view other drivers as human beings - and I include myself here - I am an impatient jerk when I am driving. I think it has something to do with being separated from humanity by metal and glass.

I have another question:

Why is Critical Mass still around? What have they actually accomplished in all the years they've been riding in Seattle? So far all I see is a lot of bad P.R. for the Seattle cycling community.

WAAAAH! WAAAAH!

Too bad Erica wasn't one of the cyclists that got hit here. CM participants deserve everything they get.

Erica, I asked this in the comments on another post on this topic:

Critical Mass started in what, 1992 or so? In 16 years, has it actually accomplished anything? More bike lanes? Improved bike lanes? Bike-only streets? Bike-only days on major arterials? Anything?

Can you answer? And I'm talking real, tangible results, not "raised the profile of cyclists" or something lame. Having been trapped in a friend's car during a CM ride, with people yelling and pounding on the roof (even though we were at a complete standstill, waiting as patiently as possible for them to pass), I don't see the benefit. I'm totally pro-bike and anti-car (never owned one, never will), but CM tactics make even me want to run them down. This thing has been going on for 16 years, and all it does is give cyclists a bad name. Enough's enough.

If you want to do something constructive for cycling in the city and encourage people to get out of their cars, try something like this: http://groups.google.com/group/critical-manners-ride-sf

I know it's easier to have a monthly tantrum en masse and then sit in smug satisfaction that you've stuck it to the man, but CM is getting us nowhere.

ECB's post made perfect sense - most of the comment-writers here sound like total fucking lunatics.

Good questions.

Also: why are so many slog commentators so hostile to bicyclists, to critical mass, and to anything that smacks of even mild civil disobedience? It seems like the majority of comments come from people with barely disguised vigilante fantasies, which is scary.

Why ask why when we all know this is about a driver losing his cool and getting very angry at idiotic cyclists who would not move out of the way!
You have a male driver and some males on bikes and the testosterone turned them ALL into angry morons!
The cyclists should have moved out of the way and the guy in the car should have been more patient or smarter about how he handled it!

Also: why are so many slog commentators so hostile to bicyclists, to critical mass, and to anything that smacks of even mild civil disobedience?

Because this isn't effective protest. It's protest just for the sake of being douchebags. Give me proof that Critical Mass does anything but incur the wrath of drivers with its protests, and I'll start to believe otherwise.

Gawd, you really are 9 years old, ECB. This is all about power and who wields it, and who will always gets squished if they get in the way by just being stupid.

Lawl at yuppies who think cars weigh 2000 pounds...

If the passenger is pregnant with the driver's baby, she has a big incentive not to disagree with his version of the story. To never tell the truth.

Was the driver drug tested during his wrist slap?

How hungry is Seattle's attorneying class?

As an ex-driver (pedestrian who now walks roughly 35-40 miles per week), I'll say the behavior I'm most frequently shocked at is the bikers. Frequently disobeying stopsigns and traffic signals, pulling ahead of cars, jumping on to sidewalks (nearly hitting pedestrians). I'd like to muster more sympathy for bikers, but I don't see how these critical mass protests do ANYTHING but further alienate them. As a driver, bikers could annoy sometimes. As a pedestrian, they infuriate me. So I get sick of hearing these posts about how it's all the drivers fault.

We’re not stopping traffic, WE ARE TRAFFIC!”
-Seattle Critical Mass Flyer

The problem(s) with your group is that you want car drivers to respect bikes and the traffic laws to keep you all safe while your group does just the opposite.

You can’t have it both ways. I ride a bicycle, a motorcycle and drive a car and know that each has its own limitations built on the reality of the world.

A bike messenger (for example) that jumps curbs, splits traffic, runs red lights and causes me on my motorcycle to avoid him or her, will not get my respect on the last Friday of each month while you ride in mass.

Your group has a hair trigger built on hypocrisy (and I am guessing too much Red Bull) and bullshit and god help you all if I or my family should encounter your madness!

Don Taylor

Having read numerous emails from eyewitnesses who say the driver in the incident deliberately drove into a crowd of cyclists with his Subaru, however, I have a few questions for the Seattle media and police.

While I wasn't at this incident, and all the eyewitnesses could be reporting it accurately, we can't assume just because it's a large group that their version is the whole truth. I was in a vehicle/pedestrian incident about 15 years ago witnessed by at least a dozen people, and every one of them told blatant, whopping lies to the police to try to implicate me as the bad guy.

Critical Mass is actually a beautiful thing. It's a great event, a great idea, and more people should experience their city this way. It would be easy to organize it better and bigger.

I've enjoyed it many times as a pedestrian caught up in front of Pike Place Market. Tourists love it as well. It's like a big party. Many of them can't figure out what the heck is going on, but they enjoy it and take lots of photos of the cyclists, weird bikes, and themselves surrounded in the middle of the street.

Critical Mass is actually a beautiful thing. It's a great event, a great idea, and more people should experience their city this way. It would be easy to organize it better and bigger.

I've enjoyed it many times as a pedestrian caught up in front of Pike Place Market. Tourists love it as well. It's like a big party. Many of them can't figure out what the heck is going on, but they enjoy it and take lots of photos of the cyclists, weird bikes, and themselves surrounded in the middle of the street.

@18: I don't care what you think about CM. You and other commentators are letting your view of CM completely cloud this issue. Saying that CM is not "effective", in the context of what happened yesterday, implies that people who get run over are somehow asking for it, or deserve it. They aren't, and they don't.

Anyway, if you don't think they're effective, I hope you're personally involved in an alternative that you think is effective at overturning car culture and making the roads safe for bicyclists. And I'd love to hear what that alternative is.

Mainly I think a lot of people here on slog are engaging in armchair activism over this issue, which is to say they aren't doing anything constructive in their own daily lives to change things, while telling other people who are at least trying to make a difference that they're stupid and deserve a beat down.

Why do you always assume that the motorist is at fault and the bike riders never are? In situations like this, the truth usually falls somewhere in between the conflicting reports.

I'm not sure how well the Critical Mass protest is going. They keep getting hit or beat up and it's always a lawyer or a grad student or some well-educated person who gets it.

Basicallym, what this is is a pissing match between men. it's stupid.

Erica, honestly, every time you post something I think "Oh god she must be just AWFUL to work with. That one person ... who everyone else has to work ... just a little bit harder to make up for."

@16 "mild civil disobedience"??? What bullshit. You obviously know NOTHING about civil disobedience.

God, bring back the good old days of ACT UP! and Queer Nation and the like when people were performing acts of civil disobedience FOR A PURPOSE.

Your CM parades are no more of a "civil disobedience" than online petitions demanding the return of One Calorie Diet Coke to your local Fred Meyer.

Let's get real. Anyone who's seen CM in action can tell you that it's the Parade of Pedaling Pricks.

Do they actually believe their own propaganda, that somehow their lawless, insulting behavior is improving the lot of the rider? Get serious. It's a circle jerk on wheels.

Do I approve of a driver retaliating by crunching bikes and riders? Of course not. But I sure do understand it.

I assume in almost every altercation between car and CM, car driver always claims to be "frightened." It plays much, much better in court than admitting you were POed at the bikers and stepped on the gas trying to chase them out of your way.

Slog commenters make me cry, almost. But then I realize you're all just way to easy to rile up. It's a bike ride. Calm down.

You know what? It really doesn't matter if the CM'ers were being "assholes". If you're driving a 3,000+ lb. machine capable of hurting or killing other human beings, even if done so under "accidental circumstances", you have a FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY to err on the side of caution.

In every other "rules of the road" scenario, say when dealing with boats, or planes, or whatever, the more powerful vehicle generally MUST ALWAYS YIELD to the slower, lower powered vehicle - NO FUCKING (or very few, and under very limited circumstances) EXCEPTIONS.

If you're in that much of a hurry to make that dinner reservation that running over a few folks who happen to get in your way - for whatever reason - seems like a reasonable option, then maybe, just maybe, you need to take a cold sober re-evaluation of your fucking priorities, mate.

The basic problem here is rage all around. I ride my bike all the time, and just have to laugh at the cyclists I encounter that road rage as hard or harder than most drivers. Road rage + cyclist rage = lock them all up, if you ask me.

COMMENT DELETED: inflammatory and off point. Anonymously calling people names is pathetic and childish, and all such comments will be deleted.

In every other "rules of the road" scenario, say when dealing with boats, or planes, or whatever, the more powerful vehicle generally MUST ALWAYS YIELD to the slower, lower powered vehicle - NO FUCKING (or very few, and under very limited circumstances) EXCEPTIONS.

Sure! That's just fine. No fucking exceptions. Got it.

But Critical Mass cyclists DON'T FOLLOW THE RULES OF THE ROAD. Hoping that they'll get run over is extreme, yes, but assuming that these arrogant, sanctimonious asshats have a right to break the rules without consequences is bullshit.

If you're advocating that the road be shared, then fucking share it. Trying crossing the street during a Critical Mass ride, and tell me if they give YOU the right-of-way.

Everyones response seems to be, "Fuck CM'ers, they run red lights and drink beer.."

Regardless of how you feel about the people on the ride, how can you justify accelerating towards a group of people, with the intention of running them over in a car?

CM are the frat boys of the cycling world. Seriously, even friends that ride a lot have bad things to say about them.

The fact is that they *do* scream obscenities at people in cars and bang/kick cars that are just sitting there watching CM cycle by. They are looking for a confrontation.

If you take the fact that it was a CM event out of it does the behavior of the driver become less or more acceptable?

I'd say that I can't believe what bicycle apologists the Stranger staff are (and what shoddy journalism they're perpetrating, with all of these obviously biased "eyewitness reports"), but I'm not really surprised at all.

Imagine if this incident DIDN'T involve a bunch of entitled hipsters on bikes (the Stranger's key demographic) and that, instead, it involved a right-wing Christian fundamentalist anti-choice group.

That group decides to stage an un-permitted march and rally through busy city streets during rush hour. They march through our neighborhoods with utter disregard for the people who live there and the people just trying to make their way through there. They block off entire streets for lengthy periods of time and ignore all of the rules of the road-- crossing when they feel like crossing, where they feel like crossing. And they are aggressive-- REALLY aggressive. Yelling at passers by, berating people, some even getting violent.

Some in the crowd are drunk. Some have knives on them, antagonizing people, as they pass, obviously looking for trouble.

A man is attempting to pull out of his driveway and into the street, the street he lives on and uses every day. He might have a "reservation" to get to, he might have an emergency, he might just want to go to the fucking grocery store-- that's pretty irrelevant. What matters is that HE isn't doing anything wrong, he's just trying to go about his day.

As he pulls out of his driveway, he is surrounded by the anti-choice protesters. Aggressively, they tell him that he's just going to have to wait, that it's THEIR turn now-- despite the fact that they have zero legal authority to tell him to wait or to be blocking the road. In fact, they are breaking the law by obstructing traffic (not to mention countless other infractions).

The man is infuriated-- he tells them to move the fuck out of the way, he needs to go. (Wouldn't you do the same if you found a bunch of asshole anti-choicers blocking your driveway?) As he impatiently waits, some of the marchers pound on his car. He gets frustrated and tries to back up, only to find that there are people surrounding the back of his car, too. He accidentally hits one of them, not hard, and he stops.

He's blocked in. Trapped. After he accidentally hit one of them, the mob becomes more violent-- screaming obscenities. Hitting his car. Trying to open the car doors.

His pregnant wife is in the front seat, panicked. Panic sweeps over the man as well. What are they going to do? The mob is getting angrier. His window gets bashed in. The glass goes flying everywhere. Another window goes. Someone pulls out a knife. The tires get slashed. People are screaming, everything is a blur. Someone reaches in the driver's side window and punches the man.

In a blind panic, in self-preservation fight-or-flight mode, the man knows he needs to get out of there, get out of there now-- they have knives, they are angry, they are violent. He needs to keep his wife safe, he needs to keep the baby safe, he needs to keep himself safe. They have punched him, they have broken the windows, they have flattened his tires. He needs to go. NOW.

So he goes. Not far. Half a block. Maybe one block. The crowd is enraged-- HOW DARE HE!!! They pull him from his car and beat him, severely enough that he requires staples to the back of his head.

He was trapped, cornered, and put into a situation that was going to end poorly no matter what. While running into a crowd of people with your car isn't exactly a sane thing to do, no one is claiming that the man was in his right mind when it happened. His windows had been bashed in. He had been hit. People had knives. He wasn't operating on sanity, he was operating on self-preservation and adrenaline.

The anti-choicers are, as any one can see, entirely to blame in this scenario. The Stranger would be outraged-- taking to the streets! Throw the book at them! Lock them up! The bastards had it coming!

But, wait, no. These weren't anti-choicers. They were bicyclists. So somehow, in the eyes of the Stranger, that makes them above the law.

Traffic laws are there for a reason-- for EVERYONE'S safety. There is no reason that Critical Mass can't get permits, can't set a route, can't get a police escort-- other than the fact that they don't WANT to. They believe that they're above the law-- red lights, two way streets, right-of-way: none of that applies to them and their almighty "CAUSE." (Which is what again?... Anarchy?... Douchebaggery?...)

I am pro-bike. I am pro-mass transit. But I am anti-assholes and pricks who think that they can do whatever the fuck they want, to hell with everyone else.

Obviously these asswipes weren't hurt too badly-- the bike has a bent fucking tire and somehow Superman claims that a car "LITERALLY DROVE OVER HIS LEG," yet he ended up without a single broken bone. (Someone call Ripley's 'cause that's a-fucking-mazing.)

When you break the law, and then face repercussions because of it (like getting run over when you're blocking the flow of traffic), that's no one's fault but your own. Don't want to get run over? Don't stand behind a car.

Marches, parades, rallies, funeral processions-- there are policies in place to ensure that groups can congregate SAFELY and without completely disturbing the public. What makes Critical Mass above following the law?

This isn't the first time it's happened-- they have a history of violent aggression. Check out some of the videos that the martyred CMers themselves have placed on YouTube. A highlight is the one where they nearly beat up an elderly couple-- classy. Real classy.

Fuck Critical Mass and their "cause." Fuck 'em all.

@41 I... I think I'm in love...

@ 31 (Rob Lutenstiel) Do I approve of a driver retaliating by crunching bikes and riders? Of course not. But I sure do understand it.
So, you don't approve of murder, but you understand it? Think logically about your argument, before you post it.

@ 37 (Demo Kid) But Critical Mass cyclists DON'T FOLLOW THE RULES OF THE ROAD.
So, because someone runs a stop sign, you can hit them and not be responsible?

@ 40 (Samantha)
Way to copy and paste...

Hey Barista!!

Shouldn't you be spending less time bitching like a whiney little girl about how unfair it is that you are so poor that you have to ride a bike and more time making our latte's?

People who ought to obey the law:

Cyclists
Karl Rove
Scooter Libby
Dick Cheney
Telecoms
W.
Motorists
CIA
Blackwater (except in Iraq, where the law says the law doesn't apply)
U.S. Army
NSA
Andy Dick

Why does being more physically vulnerable somehow render one above existing traffic laws?

Why does ECB love loaded questions so?

And Amelia@25 - if Critical Mass is such a beautiful thing, let them do what every other large traffic-obstructing group of people would be expected to do and get a permit for it.

Go OKC Potatoes!!!

"Why do we let these people keep getting away with it, and getting away with it, and getting away with it?"

Good question Erica. Because they're on bicycles?

We shouldn't let them. We should purge the streets and the bike lanes with bulldozers.

Bicyclists in this city are big assholes. They complain about cars and drivers yet have no concern for pedestrians. I could care less about cyclists.

#40 More, then it's just a random group of idiots attacking someone in a car, which makes them even more likely to be maniacs and the driver more afraid.

I posted not one, but two comments in this thread. Neither of them are here. Is Slog censoring comments? It wouldn't seem so from the asshats on both sides posting, but where are my comments?

Who knows really who is at fault. It's a total us vs. them pissing contest that we probably will never know the truth to, but we do know the outcome. This has further widened the gap between cyclists and drivers and unfortunately some angry driver is going to read this story, see someone on the road who isn't paying attention and accidentally cuts the driver off and the driver will retaliate and run over the cyclist. It's sad, but it's a cycle that CM is causing.

You want more bike lanes, more rights on the road? Earn them. Petition your local government, ride your bike while following the rules of the road, and treat others as you would want to be treated. Blocking traffic and being aggressive towards drivers doesn't help your cause.

God help you if you tried to pull this shit anywhere in Ohio. If you started pounding on my car I'd promptly get out and give you an ass kicking, then if your friends decided they wanted to go into mob mode you'd be faced with an angry concealed carry permit holder who feels threatened. It won't end well at all for you if you continue this douchebaggery you label as a civil disobedience.

Stir the hornet's nest enough times and eventually an angry hornet is going to sting your ass really hard.

It sounds to me like the driver was probably some self-righteous self-important asshat and he was held up and forced off the road by other asshats on a power trip and then things got heated.

@49: "We should purge the streets and the bike lanes with bulldozers."

Do you even realize what you're saying? Do you somehow not get a mental picture of of that horrifying scene? I know you aren't serious - god help us if you are - but don't you think about things before you say them? Maybe you should, as we are all so often told, be careful what you wish for.

@53: Who do you think you are, to tell cyclists to "earn" their rights on the road? As somebody mentioned before me, cyclists pay their taxes too. It's not like drivers are all perfect either, CM is just a terrible cross-section of bike culture that purports itself to be wholly representative. Cyclists DO earn their rights - it's just the CM-ers and bike messengers that abuse them. But it has to start somewhere, and while it is largely in the hands of the cyclists, if you want cyclists to be more respectable in the city maybe you do something to help and not be threatening to pull a gun.