Recently had a very shitty day's worth of biking and need to vent.
- Got harassed on a low-traffic back road by a driver who was mad he had to pass me while I was at 5 below the speed limit.
- Got harassed by a driver in a jacked up americamobile who was stopped fully inside the bike box at an intersection when I set up to make my left turn.
- Got aggressively honked at by a driver on a low-speed neighborhood road that has signs and paint marking it as a bikeway and reminding drivers that the law allows people on bikes to use the full lane.
- an entire block worth of bike lane was covered in parked cars.
- Got aggressively passed with less than 1ft clearance multiple times by drivers going 30-40mph
All in one day was just too much for me. This is a "bike friendly" city and this was several different neighborhoods with varying levels of infrastructure.
Obviously infrastructure needs to be in place before it would be an equitable or popular policy, but more people need their licenses suspended and/or revoked for aggressive driving. Make people retake driving exams every year. Make it a multi-hour exam instead of a 10-minute multiple choice quiz on what a stop sign means. Require CDLs for these monstrous trucks and SUVs. Lifetime driving ban for using a cell phone while driving. Get rid of "right on red" turns.
All this shit literally kills people daily, and the entitlement from American drivers to flout the safety of others to save themselves 10 seconds is disgusting. How do you convince these people to care about human lives? How do you have a conversation about speed limits with someone who thinks it's fine to run stop signs and go 40mph in a 25mph residential zone? How do you talk about anything with someone whose attention span is so fucked that they need to scroll their algorithms at a stoplight? Just revoke their licenses and ban them from driving ever, before they kill or maim someone.
