Car Free DC and Die

In celebration of the first annual Car Free D.C. Day, I road my bike to work. In the fifteen minutes it took me to bike from my house to Union Station, I was cut off and practically side-swiped by a DC Public School bus, almost run over on C Street when drivers chose not obey the “BIKE LANE STARTS HERE – YIELD TO BIKES” sign, and narrowly avoided a faceplant on the pavement when I swerved to avoid hitting a pair of small children running blindly across an intersection.

I love riding my bike to work. It’s good exercise, it takes half the time of driving by car or bus, and I can feel smug in being morally superior to everyone else for not driving to work alone in my 8-seat Lincoln Navigator. But I have a hard time dealing with angry drivers. I also have a hard time dealing with drivers who treat residential neighborhoods as super highways. Crazy children running-wild are less of a problem, although irresponsible parenting is a major problem plaguing this city.

I appreciate anything done to promote bicycle-riding and public transportation, but something has to be done to make this city more bicycle-friendly. Bike lanes are fantastic, but how about some actual policing and fines for aggressive driving that endangers bicyclists?

And yes, bicyclists often disobey stop signs and ride aggressively. But we’re not the ones driving 4,000 pound killing machines that are responsible for 40,000 deaths each year.