There's a great story in Outside magazine about the state of bicycling in America, and one of the people profiled in it is Joe Simonetti, a 57-year-old psychotherapist who lives with his wife in the Westchester suburb Pound Ridge and frequently commutes to his office by bicycle. It's a 50 mile trip that takes him about three-and-a-half hours each way, and Simonetti says he does it twice a week—even after getting hit by a car and breaking his collarbone:
Simonetti tells me of a crash last summer, in the Bronx, that left him with a broken collarbone. It was a "right hook," one of the most common crash types for cyclists: a driver, traveling in Simonetti's lane ahead of him, suddenly turned right—without signaling—directly into Simonetti's path. An ambulance responded quickly, but the police did not. The paramedics told Simonetti the police would deal with the driver when they arrived, he says. "But the guy left. I don't blame him." When the police, investigating what was now a hit-and-run, came to the hospital, they asked him if he'd gotten the license-plate number. "I was laid out on the ground," he laughs. The driver was never found.
The article also spotlights Wisconsin cyclist Jeff Frings, who has had so many close calls with drivers that he's taken to filming every one of the 100 to 250 miles he rides in a week, and posting the worst encounters on his website. The article's author, Tom Vanderbilt, also speaks to bicycling lawyer Bob Mionske, a former Olympic cyclist who says, "Enforcement is really where it all starts. If the police don't respect your mode of transportation, don't expect the rest of society to." Bingo! As Vanderbilt concludes while bicycling in Manhattan, "To cycle in America today is to engage in an almost political act, but what's often obscured is the simple idea of pleasure." To paraphrase Dylan, to bike outside the law you must be honest.
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