Ollie Oliver
@Ollie_Cycles
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Certified cycling instructor teaching everything from learn to ride to advanced bike handling. Opinions & snark are entirely my own and no one else's.
Joined December 2013
Apparently taping a rock on a beg button creates a similar effect to having a city that thinks about pedestrians. #banbegbuttons #tacticalurbanism
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I made a friend today. Drivers, when you honk at me, this is what I hear.
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When driving sucks, it's usually b/c of all the other π. When walking sucks, it's usually b/c of all the π. When taking the bus sucks, it's usually b/c of all the π. When biking sucks, it's usually b/c of all the π. I have a plan to improve transportation for everyone. .
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New rule: If a driver complains about a cyclist riding in the middle of the street on a street without a bike lane, the city has to put a protected bike lane on that street immediately. No council approval needed. We must get the bikes out or the way of these VIPs.
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People will really argue that cyclists should avoid certain streets entirely but it is absolutely mandatory that every single street has 2 lanes of car storage. Just wild.
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Cyclists: We should use a small fraction of street space so people can freely choose to bike some trips safely. Drivers: Anything less than 100% of street space being fully dedicated to private cars is your attempt to force me to ride a bike.
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People suddenly become weirdly hawkish about traffic laws when there's a cyclist to yell at.
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Cyclists, you all have collective responsibility & need perfect behavior before you can get a quantum of infrastructure. Drivers, there's no amount of antisocial, illegal, violent behavior that will result in less than 100% of street space being designed around your every whim.
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We're seeing a bike boom right now and I'd like to say something to my fellow long-time cyclists:. THEIR SEAT HEIGHT IS FINE. Seriously, leave them alone.
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Telling people to ride their bike 1-3 streets over is never considered an inconvenience. Asking people to park a block away from their destination is an unbelievable attack on innocent motorists.
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A company that profits from people who want to ride bikes but don't feel safe doing it blocking the bike lane on an urban stroad. Checks out.
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I don't care if ebikes are good for fitness (studies say they are). If you're riding an ebike you're not driving a car. I don't care what size you are or if you ever, ever pedal. Thank you for choosing a safer, environmental vehicle. A ~50lb, 20mph vehicle? Awesome! Welcome!.
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Some people are piloting 2 lb shoes capable of 3-5 mph. Some people are piloting 25lb bikes capable of 10-25mph. Some people are piloting a 3 ton Ford F150 capable of 110mph, 0-60 in under 5 secs, has huge blind spots & a soundproof cabin. Safety is not a 'shared responsibility'.
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So wild how much of the complaints about cyclists' behavior really comes down to wanting cyclists to be bound by law but not protected by it.
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Public transit should be the same price as street parking.
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Bikes are seen as inherently political and cars are not precisely because cars (manufacturing & fueling) make money for rich people at the expense of public health. Bikes are cheap, efficient machines that are extremely safe. Can't have that.
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A lot of drivers are confused about this so let's see if I can break it down. Adding bike lanes does not force anyone to ride a bike. A lack of bike lanes forces a lot of people to never ride a bike. Bike lanes enable a truly free choice. Car only infra makes a forced 'choice'.
@Ollie_Cycles @AlistairBike So your idea of choice is forcing an minority favoured option on the majority so that the majority can choose to ignore it . Elitist middle class tosh . Being a grown up Iβm fully aware of how cars work and are financed.
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"These 2 vehicles are essentially the same and should follow the same set of rules and get equal attention from law enforcement" is a real thing otherwise competent adults will say on this website.
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An incomplete list of things drivers don't care about until bike lanes are proposed: accessibility, income inequality, vehicle emissions, emergency response time,.
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Riding home the driver 2 cars back is aggressively honking. At the light the passenger of car 1 in army uniform leans out the window & yells "there's a bike, we're not gonna hit him for you." and "he has a right to be on the road" & ended w/ "HE'S GOT FUCKIN FREEDOM BITCH".
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If you think that disobeying a traffic signal means you deserve to be hit with a car, how do you feel about parking on the sidewalk or crosswalk and baseball bats?.
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It's time to get cars out of the way of buses & bikes, grown ups have places to be.
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We've spent a century shrinking sidewalks, paving over streetcar tracks, and literally chasing cyclists off the roads to make driving more convenient. I don't want to Ban Cars, I want to unFuck walking, unFuck the bus, unFuck biking for transportation. Step 1 is restrict cars.
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Route planning for a place you've never been to. By car: put the address into your GPS of choice and go. By bike: Ask if anyone you know has done it, study maps of suggested routes built by volunteers, look at every inch of Google streeview, avoid the most direct routes,. .
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I read it over and I stand by every word.
Pedestrian safety is a two-way street. What pedestrians and drivers can do to make our roadways safer
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The law says: Bikes are vehicles!. Police crash report says: bike riders are pedestrians!. Vehicle free plaza rules say: Bikes are vehicles!. Bicycle parking: goes in pedestrian spaces!. People walking: that vehicle belongs in the street!. People driving: Get on the sidewalk!.
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@DeTahmineh Men should always have a leading cause of death for children. A guy not having a leading cause of death for children is a big red flag for so many women.
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If you honk at me & close pass me and I catch up to you, I'm allowed to break a taillight or a wing mirror. Sorry, those are the rules.
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"Cars & driving contribute to the economy, unlike cyclists" is such a dumb sentiment. As if the ~$9K per year I save by not owning a car just evaporates. Like when I stopped paying for car insurance I would light a stack of π΅ bills on fire π₯ for fun.
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Remember fellow cyclists, make sure you're always breaking at least 1 law. It's the only way to be absolutely sure that drivers see you.
@Ollie_Cycles I have yet to see a bicyclist obey one single traffic law.
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Car apologists love to pretend that every car on the road is doing a trip that cannot be done any other way. The reality is that a large proportion of car trips could be done by another mode tomorrow if we would stop coddling drivers.
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Trying to imagine a message telling drivers not to use vehicles with large blind spots. .
Bundling up is good for the cold, but can make looking both ways difficult. #JerseyDrives #WinterSafety #PedestrianSafety #DriverSafety #BeStreetSmartNJ
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MUST GET IN FRONT MUST GET IN FRONT MUST GET IN FRONT MUST GET IN FRONT MUST GET IN FRONT MUST GET IN FRONT MUST GET IN FROM MUST GET IN FRONT MUST GET IN FRONT MUST GET IN FRONT MUST GET IN FRONT MUST GET IN FRONT MUST GET IN FRONT MUST GET IN FRONT MUST GET IN FRONT
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60% of US car trips are 5 miles or less. 2018 is on pace to be the 4th hottest year in a row. The bicycle is the most energy efficient land vehicle ever invented.
What is the most interesting and revealing and hard-to-believe/understand statistic you know.
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I don't want the same road or the same rules. There's a multi-ton weight difference, there's a top speed difference of ~100mph. One vehicle is literally a top cause of child death & planet death, the other is literally the most energy efficient land vehicle ever invented.
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Ok smart guy, how do you propose we get transit everywhere in the USA? Huh?. IDK, pretty much the same way we got cars everywhere? Plow billions of dollars into it, withhold federal dollars for states that won't get with the program, you know, make an effort.
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They're not in the way of you driving, you're in the way of them living. -@tomflood1.
Today a child biking at corner of Skillman & St Pauls was hit by a speeding car attempting to avoid the light at St Pauls & Kennedy. A split second difference could have led to worse. This is an emergency & @JerseyCity needs to treat it as such. @StevenFulop @mjmanzella225 π¨
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"Pedestrians are too vulnerable to share space with cyclists. We should physically separate them!". Yes, I agree. And for the identical reason, we should separate car drivers from cyclists. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not be so hasty! It's not like cyclists are people.".
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BΜΆaΜΆnΜΆ ΜΆCΜΆaΜΆrΜΆsΜΆ. UnFuck Biking. I don't give a shit about your "Extreme parking problems" because I can't bike 0.75 miles for groceries without someone threatening my life for literally zero time savings. Fuck your parking.
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If you honk your car horn because the driver in front of you is yielding to a pedestrian, you should permanently lose your license.
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"Oh sure, it's easy for you to say people should live car free. You live in a walkable city and work 2 miles from home.". Yes. That is not an accident.
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Ban car horns. Their intended use (emergency warnings) is defeated by their actual use (tantrums).
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Most short urban car trips are more antisocial than the kid on a bike you saw doing a wheelie through a red light.
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Put a driver in a 30 sec time out for close following & honking at me. NYPD is giving me a disorderly conduct ticket because of course they are. Officers insisting that if I'd pulled over & called 911 they would have protected me. They let the driver go.
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NYC has made it illegal to bike with 2 headphones on. I'd add a law requiring your drivers side window be fully open by the same reasoning.
Best ice breaker question for a SRTS βIf you could add or eliminate one traffic law what would it be?β.
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Imagine if engineers & planners talked about parking the way they talk about protected bike lanes. "Unfortunately there just isn't an opportunity for parking on this corridor. Users who want that can go 1/4 mile over to the nearest parallel corridor with those facilities".
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Just caught up with a driver who right hooked me. Said he saw me but doesn't believe me that I had to slam my brakes. And I'm back to Ban Cars, Yes Literally.
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So if I buy a sectional sofa and home theater setup that's too big for my living room, there's no problem with me annexing the sidewalk, right?
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@bikerider08 @samwightt @foxyjewishmama There's no amount of good behavior that will get drivers to be support building a protected bike lane network.
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If cars are so great, why do get so mad at the suggestion they spend a few extra minutes in them?.
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When people say that weather makes biking for transportation impractical, they're telling you that they use their car as a 2 ton, internal combustion raincoat or parka.
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I have zero sympathy for your anecdotes about someone you know who would never choose to bike for local transportation. I know too many people who want to but feel afraid. They've had the choice taken away from them.
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People have some vague personal hierarchy of traffic violations. They tell themselves it's based on safety but it's mostly about driver convenience. This is extremely clear when you compare public reactions to cyclists running a red light vs a driver parking in a crosswalk.
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Cyclists should be able to challenge a driver's license by submitting their license plate number to the DMV. The DMV then issues a quiz on cycling laws to both the driver & the cyclist. If you score better than the driver, they have to retake drivers education.
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@BensalemPolice Do you have a portal for uploading dangerous close passes by drivers? You know, car drivers, the leading cause of injury deaths for kids in the US?.
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Just got served a car ad about cyclists "descending on your neighborhood" & "one minute there over here, now they're over by there". Fuck you very much @VolvoCarUSA.
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Firstname Bunchanumbers are always such good faith conversation partners.
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Happy 7th birthday to my all time favorite bike locking technique.
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Yes, the same people that don't understand marked crosswalks are going to memorize this chart π.
The recently installed a High-Intensity Activated Crosswalk (HAWK) signal on Highway 99 north of 234th Street has been activated today. #pedestriansafety
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I wish drivers were OK driving behind someone on a bike for the same amount of time they think is acceptable to park in the crosswalk or on sidewalks.
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@SarahJ_Berry Someone comes up behind you in the grocery store, swings a bat inches from your head. Sometimes they simultaneously blow an air horn. Then they join the 10 items or less line w/ a full cart. When you ask them why they did it just to stand in line, they say "you were in my way".
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A century after this cartoon was published and we're still chasing kids off the street.
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I would probably stop talking about drivers & cars entirely if I could consistently bike to the grocery store & train station without having my life threatened. But yes "bike advocates are too mean to normie car drivers" is a valid concern too I guess π.
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Drivers have the mistaken impression that they never delay cyclists. Because they rarely have an air horn blasted in their back seat or a gun pointed in their face for their trouble.
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So many people in my mentions saying the quiet part out loud, that for them the threat of death and disfigurement for people walking & biking is a feature not a bug. They want to use it as a reason vulnerable road users must be perfect while drivers can do as they please.
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"keep your reusable bags in your car". "park further away to add some steps". "use the state subsidy to make your new SUV an electric vehicle". "put a paper straw in the reusable cup in the cup holder of the car you drove 1 mile to Starbucks".
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Imagine if people were more offended by dangerous driving than they are by mean things cyclists say in response to deadly driving.
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Driver who turned across the bike lane cutting me off (1-way, left hook) responded to me yelling WHOA WHOA WHOA while slamming my brakes with "get a car bitch" so there's that.
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If hi-viz vests are so good for bike safety why are cars allowed to be painted any color besides safety orange?.
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We haven't gotten rid of cigarettes. But we have gotten rid of restaurants asking if we'd prefer the smoking section.
@Ollie_Cycles Advocate away. Knock yourself out. Pursue your passion. You arenβt getting rid of cars though.
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A driver was pulling out of a parking lot and didn't slow down at all for the marked crosswalk. I had an empty canvas bag on my shoulder and I SLAPPED his windshield with it. Honestly, feels great.
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There's literally nowhere I know of where I can ride my bike full out for my health. If I do it on the road, drivers will try to murder me. If I do it in a park or on a greenway I'm bothering other users. It would be good if there was a place where 18-25mph was acceptable.
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I just got rear ended. Doesn't appear to be any significant damage to my bike or my person. The driver left the scene. The police didn't want to write a report until I threw a fit and didn't believe I had the plate right until I showed them the video. Same road, same rules right?
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While loading my full shopping cart into my @TernBicyclesNA GSD, a passerby asked in disbelief if it all was going to fit. When I said I'd have room to spare, he scoffed that it must be hard to pedal up hill. I said not with the β‘ electric assist!β‘. Let's #GetShitDone
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And same goes for people who park in the crosswalk? I should be able to crush their car into a cube, right?.
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I'm just so sick of people casually threatening my life with their car and politicians saying they'd like to do something about that but they need to make sure there's lots of places for people to store their weapon of choice.
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Grocery store bike parking should be within the bounds of where you're allowed to take the shopping carts.
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I love that drivers think their registration fees covers the cost of local road maintenance.
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Do normies honestly not understand that drivers use their cars as weapons to intimidate people walking and biking nigh on constantly?.
@Jer0091 @harshingmellow @racheldoughty @clarinetchick @Boenau Agree that most drivers suck. Most are bad drivers too. Just not understanding why bike people are always so aggressive and angry. Is it because the cars annoy them, get in their way etc.? I lived with a bike guy in NYC for years and he hated people in cars.
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I'm not against cars in general, no problem with cars in theory. I just don't think they should be allowed on this street. Or that one. Or that one. No, not that one either.
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Bikes are inherently dangerous because someone might run you over with a car.
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There has been a de facto ban on bike riding, especially kids riding bikes, for over a century. It's still going on. The existence of people like me who defy the ban is the exception that proves the rule.
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@SecretaryPete.Why are fixed gear bikes without hand brakes not street legal but the Dodge Hellcat with a top speed of 203 mph is street legal? Explain it to me like I'm 5. This question brought to you by the most recent episode of @TheWarOnCars.
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@JDoucette2050 New York City changed this law a few years ago to reflect the fact that the guy you were scolding made it across within the time allotted. Why is driver convenience such a priority for you? Drivers routinely steal the first few seconds of the pedestrian signal.
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Men should always have a car. And a gun. And a large cache of opioids. If you're not surrounding yourself with the top 3 causes of injury death, are you even American, let alone a Real Manβ’οΈ?.
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Where's my government subsidies for not owning a planet/child killing machine?.
Gas prices are too high. 23 million Californians will be receiving up to $1000 starting TOMORROW. This will be the largest state tax rebate in the country.
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I'm pro-choice for cars: They should be safe, electric, and rare.
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Suggesting cyclists must wear helmets to protect them from motor vehicle users is like suggesting non-smokers buy gas masks. These solutions technically work but put the consequences & cost on the unwilling victims of the action.
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I love how drivers can't spend more than 1 second behind someone riding a bike but will sit through an entire green light if they're on their phone and no one is behind them. Someday I hope to get the same amount of respect as an Instagram story.
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Street parking is very valuable! Not valuable enough to charge market rates for. Or manage in any meaningful way. But definitely more valuable than public safety. Or expanding transportation options. But Valuable. Very, very valuable.
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This image is a pretty good litmus test for politics. Do you regard these men with respect or with disgust?
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When I say that people brandish their cars as weapons against me while cycling legally, people say I'm being dramatic. .
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I'm sorry I didn't include a picture of a structure destroyed by a bicycle, but I couldn't find one. If you have any, please post them below in the interest of fairness.
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This is exactly why people who think cyclists should have to pay registration fees to cover their infrastructure costs on can be dismissed as disingenuous trolls. Road wear is calculated by the 4th power of axle weight.
Thank you, humble sidewalk, for serving the pedestrians of Denver for *119 years*
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A thing I find especially frustrating about the "not all cars" discourse is the assertion that people who say 'ban cars' don't understand what it's like living in car dependant places. A lot of us grew up there, know exactly what it's like, & it's why we want cars to be optional.
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All the time I save biking for transportation gets spent lobbying my local elected officials to make it less deadly for me to bike for transportation.
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Door pops open in front of me in the bike lane, I stop. Driver: Oh, sorry. Me, taking a moment to collect myself, says nothing. Driver, getting annoyed at my reaction: Hey, we all make mistakes sometimes, ok?. Me: It's my life & your paint job. I get it, NBD for you.
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Many drivers think of 'share the road' the same way your middle school bully would say 'share your lunch'.
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