1. Introduction.
2. Comment.
3. Your editor.
1. Introduction.
A few days ago, I passed on Boston’s WBZ radio’s publicizing of a mocking of the Cambridge Machine’s bicycle front organization (using a much more noble name, of course).
I got a strong and strange comment from a bicycle activist.
Dan Rea, whom WBZ was quoting, thinks bike helmets make good sense.
The bike activist thinks that bicyclists are victims and should not be treated as anything else.
I responded with gusto.
The following is from George Despotes:
2. Comment.
RATIONAL DISCOURSE does not seem possible; there must be compromise on both sides and the bicyclists have to be regulated for their own good and that of the public.
"If the laws are not well enforced the people are not well governed," (an approximation of the quote above the entry to the Cambridge City Hall).
I'd required them to have lights both front and rear and GPS transceivers; they're a small political group and they are outnumbered by non-bicyclists; the legitimacy of transportation regulation is pretty well established...(in my opinion).
3. Your editor.
Once again, the Cambridge, MA, USA, Machine’s bike lobby organization stinks to me like the usual company union in which the people they are “protecting” will get shafted when as it is convenient for the machine.
So they lie and call themselves the “Safe Streets Coalition” or whatever.
The thing that really distresses me is that a major part of the shafting of bicyclists is highly visible and aggressive.
The goal of the Cambridge Machine is that of confining bikes to sidewalks.
Well intentioned people are commonly shafted by the Cambridge Machine. The lawless people the Cambridge Machine is stringing on are not well intentioned. But this controlled group will string them on anyway. And the vicious people will likely swallow anything and everything as long as the speaker CLAIMS TO support them having all rights and no responsibilities.
The Cambridge Machine’s lawless friends are getting conned into very serious harm to the many very responsible bicyclists.
That is rotten. That is business as usual from the Cambridge Machine.
