Brad McGee's last pro race

First up, so jealous you were there, glad that you had some pics…

As for the crash, you know what i’m getting sick of this shit happening in Australia… Things need to change..

Read Pedal Power (on the PC bookshelf) about cars and self-centeredness. People typically waste years off their lives in car traffic, but if a bike slows them down by half a second, it sets them off. They redirect all their frustrations on the “other,” the cyclists, citing some bullshit technical violation as a way of masking their irrationality. It’s not unlike calling a certain politician an “elitist” so you don’t have to say what you’re really thinking.

Sorry to get political, but this phenomenon, wherever it arises, really pisses me off. Especially when it comes to cars.

One of our free papers which litter the transport network in the early evenings has had a long running and increasingly inflammatory series of letters from extremely reactionary and ill informed people who have probably never been on a bike in their lives. From what I can deduce, the majority of London cyclists behave themselves and it’s the few that mean we’re all tarred like this. People moan about bikes but the same people probably wouldn’t care one jot if I told them about the aggressive taxi driver who almost shoved me under a car on London Bridge the other week when all I was doing was, totally legitimately and with with perfectly clear signals, changing lanes ahead of the upcoming junction…..

…which were up sharply since a cyclist hit and killed a 77 year-old pedestrian in 2006.

I figure that the newspapers need to point out, repeatedly, that cars hit and kill pedestrians far more often than cyclists do. But cyclists also need to remember their braking limitations, and not assume that pedestrians will see/hear them.

Rothko, do you have a source for the number of pedestrian deaths from cars in the last 2 or 3 years, same area? And/or deaths from car crashes? I have to guess that’s a larger number than “1.”

According to a source at the PGH citizen’s police review board, he’s already been yanked off to a desk job for being incredibly rude. She said she was surprised that our little interaction ended as tamely as it did. Scary thought.

So with that in mind, I wonder if a general crack-down on road-rage behavior might not pay the best dividends for cyclists, without making cyclists into an even greater target on the streets and in the press? In other words, ask your city / town for a general crack-down on aggressive acts while driving. Can’t hurt, might help.