What A Moron

In what can only be described as click bait written by a person who seems to have suffered a head injury (perhaps a helmet would help?) Jeff Jacoby continues the Globes tradition of publishing foolish OpEd’s about cycling (see here here and here).

The death last month of cyclist Anita Kurmann, who was fatally struck by a tractor-trailer turning from Mass. Ave. onto Beacon Street, was a terrible tragedy. The 38-year-old medical researcher was at least the 13th cyclist killed in collisions with motor vehicles on city streets since 2010. That number is sure to rise if Boston keeps encouraging people to ride bicycles where bicycles don’t belong.

Busy thoroughfares aren’t meant for cyclists. They are meant for the cars, trucks, and buses that transport the vast majority of people moving through the nation’s cities. Those vehicles weigh thousands of pounds, operate at 300-plus horsepower, and are indispensable to the economic and social well-being of virtually every American community. Bicycles can be an enjoyable, even exhilarating, way to get around. So can horses, skis, and roller skates. Adding any of them to the flow of motorized traffic on roads that already tend to be too clogged, however, is irresponsible and dangerous.

I can’t imagine a less tactful way to talk about the very real problem of  cyclist road safety.  Not only is he being incredibly crass about a recently killed person, he is missing the point that cycling as a mode of road share has been growing rapidly over the last 5 years.  With surging numbers of cyclists on the road, you would expect much higher number of fatalities in a city so poorly designed for cyclists (like Boston).  Indicating that cycling is a much safer mode of transportation than he lets on.

He goes on to assert that because someone died we shouldn’t use that method of transportation anymore?  Did anyone tell him that in the same 5 year period (2010 to 2015) over 1000 people have died in Massachusetts due to fatal car crashes. (source) many of them in Boston, including pedestrians.  Are we to assume no one should walk or drive either?

He also seems to forget that it was cars that were added to pedestrian and cycling traffic, not the other way around.  Cars were late comers to the road mix, and have done nothing but kill and maim since they were introduced.

He also fails to address that Boston is only several feet above sea level, and continued use of oil (cars still run on oil) puts the very city itself in danger of destruction.  Business as usual use of oil will not only clog city streets with traffic, it will submerge those streets under water.  Also you know cars make people fat, angry and clog our air with pollution.  Cycling, solves many if not all of those problems, and causes very few new ones.

He continues to confuse his imagination with reality to such an extent that it seems to be pointless to even type out a response to the whole mess.

Seriously this guy…I think this comment summed it up best:

The distinction between a newspaper columnist and an internet troll gets more subtle every day.

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