Three Roads Blog

Here is some angst that anyone who rides a bike on public roads can appreciate:

Every day on my way to work, I mentally compose a book as I ride my bike through the streets of DC. This book is aimed at the pedestrians and cars who seem ignorant of the basic physics of bicycles–the pedestrians who act as if my bicycle and I were a slow-moving car, and the cars that act as if we were a pedestrian. The book would be aimed at communicating one simple, but apparently incredibly difficult to grasp, concept: unlike a slow-moving car or a pedestrian, I cannot suddenly stop or reverse direction.

Today I composed Chapter Three: The Reason I Want to Get into the Right Lane is That It’s Dangerous Over Here On the Left (And Not That I Have Failed to Sufficiently Appreciate the Grandeur of Your Magnificent Internal Combustion Vehicle). This is the follow-up to Chapter Two: If You Run a Red Light and Hit Me (Because I Can’t Stop) I Will Die Even Though I Am Wearing a Helmet. Chapter Four will be the first of our many chapters aimed at pedestrians; I have tentatively titled it “Pedestrians Who Leap Out in Front of Me and Get Hit (Because I Can’t Stop) Will Probably Get Hurt Worse Than Me, the Helmeted Bicyclist”.

It’s a work in progress.

Perhaps she (Megan McArdle, blogger for the Atlantic) should consider not wearing a helmet. Recent research shows that cars tend to drive closer to helmeted riders. The study also showed that cars give a wider berth to riders with long hair. My question, of course, is what about mullets, which are sort of short and sort of long? I fear that cars may drive even closer to mulleted riders.