Remember your Schwinn, your Huffy, your banana seat? Bikes used to be just ordinary objects that most people enjoyed, especially kids. When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, the streets were filled with packs of boys and girls on small bicycles delivering papers, going to the second-run movie house, or having adventures on the trails in the woods.
But today, they’re a status symbol. Bicycles are also, sadly, politically coded as “left.” As the neurotic left-leaning safetyists and enviro-freaks took up biking, children have been strapped into expensive helmets and knee pads. Gone are the days of feral preteens wheeling around. You’re lucky today if you see a kid on a bike, and if you do, they’re following behind their sedately pedaling parents like they’re lined up for lunch in first grade.
In blue cities like the one I live in (Burlington, Vermont), the bicyclists are a minor political mafia. They cry oppression at city council meetings, characterizing motorists as “dangerous people” with “car brain” who maraud through the city in “metal death boxes.” Most of this melodrama is simply in service of making the bicyclist appear to be more refined, compassionate, and “gentle” on the environment. In a word, it’s just peacocking.
In its maternal wisdom, Burlington and similar cities have made traffic more dangerous by “protecting” bicyclists with so-called “protected bike lanes.” These are the extra right-hand lanes cities make by taking away parking and driving lanes from cars. You end up with not just a right-hand lane, but a right-hand-right-hand lane with bicycles to the right of cars. It’s easy to see how a car turning right can easily plow into a bicyclist who is continuing straight.
The actual goal behind all of this that no one mentions is to “de-normalize” driving cars by characterizing cars as “death boxes” and motorists as sociopaths. All the better to burnish your image as a fierce—BUT SUPER COMPASSIONATE—warrior for Mother Earth.
All that smugness has to come out somewhere, and Californian 73-year-old bicyclist Gary Peacock thought he could bamboozle a Utah cop into treating him as a victim when it was he, Gary on the bike, who broke the rules against a motorist. In the linked video, you can even hear Gary whining, “Oh come on, man! I’m the victim here!” Then you hear the cop say, “We can go a different way and you can get arrested.” So satisfying.
Watch below:
As Rugg’s tweet explains:
NEW: Millionaire cyclist who went viral for harassing a man for “driving too close,” nearly has a panic attack after police tell him *he* will be receiving a citation. 73-year-old cyclist Gary Peacock harassed and detained a young man for driving “too close” to him. Dashcam footage however shows that the young man, 22-year-old Pierce Kempton, actually moved his car to the left to avoid Peacock. The incident happened in Park City, Utah. When the police arrived, Peacock was adamant on having the police cite Kempton but tried backtracking after they told him that *he* would also be getting a citation for disorderly conduct. The police officer told him it was too late. “He doesn’t have to get out of his car for you, he doesn’t have to identify for you, you are not law enforcement.” “You were adamant that you asked for a ticket, and now, because you’re getting one, you want him to get out of it.” Kempton’s charge was dismissed after he presented his dashcam footage. Peacock was charged with disorderly conduct. FAFO.
Let’s see what people on X thought.
Not going so well for Gary so far, is it?
This one is too good.
