Would cultivating a culture of bicyclist safety and responsibility have helped her? We will never know.

Since it’s not always the car’s fault, why does Green Wheels only talk about collisions when the auto driver is at fault? The point is, that’s only part of the puzzle. The bicyclist is just as injured either way.

Getting “indignant and preachy” probably wouldn’t be helpful to reckless drivers and bicyclists. Making clear the consequences of reckless and unsafe practices might. In the case of Green Wheels, we just don’t know yet whether that would help because it doesn’t use its position of prominence and influence to avert self-inflicted casualties by bicyclists. It focuses on lobbying for improvements and telling us over and over again that cars suck and are killing the planet, which we KNOW.

That space might be better used to instill some semblance of safe riding practices into the more feral riders. In the largest sense, GW, AAA and other advocacy groups ought to embrace the full range of issues related to their preferred mode of transportation. Or at least show up at the Transportation Safety Committee meeting the week after another bicyclist gets a head injury.

Does the AAA get indignant and preachy when a drunk illegally goes down a freeway the wrong way and kills people? It is not the job of AAA to “try and civilize the more feral motoring abusers.”

Yes, the cars drive suckily, and we never fail to point that out in the news and Police Log, including in the column you mention. The point, though, was that the bike advocacy groups – and you, apparently – use cars as the bogey man while willfully ignoring the excesses of the bicycle community. The bike advocates give every indication of wanting all the goodies and little to none of the responsibility.

This kind of post only affirms what I was alluding to – the simpleton Bikes Can Do No Wrong mentality that feeds the alienation and hostility between the two user groups.

As a bicyclist, I support the bike groups’ advocacy. I just think that for everyone’s good, they should use their influence to try and civilize the more feral bike abusers.