I remember being in a car driven by what we called a liberal back in the day. My friend was arguing against a ballot initiative that would have added a five cent per gallon tax to gasoline to fund public transit. His argument was that higher gas prices would "hurt the poor". I asked him to exit the freeway and drive along West Capital in West Sacramento. After looking around, he agreed with me that the poor generally neither own nor drive cars. However, he still opposed the gas tax.

Likewise, higher used car prices would not hurt the truly poor since they still do not own cars.

Come on, Andrew. Sure, there are cyclists who break the law. However, they are vastly outnumbered by lawless motorists. Sadly, we have come to accept 40,000 murders and one million maimings by car critters each year without blinking. For comparison,last year there were something like two deaths of pedestrians involving cyclists.

Also, in most states, cyclists need not ride single file or on the right edge of the roadway in many situations such as:

when passing

when avoiding hazards (such as parked cars whose doors may open)

when there is not enough room for a motor vehicle to SAFELY pass a bike in the lane (a cyclist is to move to the center of the lane to signal to overtaking traffic that they will will need to pass in the next lane to the left).

You are correct that, with the exception of Idaho, cyclists must stop at stop signs and red lights. However, how many motorists are stopping at them? How much kinetic energy does a cyclist carry through an intersection? Enforcement of the laws would be a good thing, but it should be universal enforcement. I have watched police ignore hundreds of cars run a stop sign while they waited for the first hapless cyclist to roll through at 2 mph.

I admit that I am a little hot under the collar about this topic since my city had two cyclists killed by motorists in the past two weeks. One was run down on a clear highway in spite of the fact that OR law clearly states that motorists must give cyclists room to fall if the motorist is traveling faster than 35 mph (no room was given, no charges have been filed) and another cyclist was "doored". In spite of witnesses to the lethal dooring, the cop who responded said there was not enough damage to the door to justify citing the killer.

It is unusual to find myself disagreeing with you, but I have been cycling around the West (Best) Coast for forty years and have had many friends slaughtered by lawless motorists. Some cyclists are behaving badly, but they are not killing people. When you see them run that red light, are you aware that the vast majority of traffic lights will not detect a bike? Actually, they can detect them but many cities (including Eugene, where I currently live) refuse to set the sensors to pick them up for fear of a stray "false positive" that would cause a motorist to wait unnecessarily.

Two stories to make my point. In the late '80s my wife and I took a medical student from the East (Least) Coast and a Korean graduate student on a bike tour of the Lost Coast and then down Highway 1 to Santa Rosa. On the last day, we had to leave the students at a store in Sonoma County and ride ahead of them to fetch some gear before nightfall. While they waited (with their bikes stashed) they were astounded to hear other customers talking about what fun it is to pin cyclists against cliff walls or knock them off of coastal cliffs with their motor vehicles. Bike is indeed black.

In Davis, CA we had two fatal wrecks involving tomato trucks on the same road separated by ten months time. In the first, a trucker approached an intersection with a red light where a cyclist was waiting. When the light changed, he turned right and got her with three axles. He then went on to the processing plant and was washing her blood off of his rig when the police arrived. He was charged with a misdemeanor and did no jail time. Ten months later, a tomato truck was passing a car that was waiting to turn left by going onto the paved right shoulder. He hit his brakes, the pull trailer veered left and the elderly couple in the car died on impact. The trucker parked, called 911 and attempted to render aid. He was convicted of manslaughter and did seven years in prison.

Blacks do not get equal protection under the law. In many parts of the country one could, and still can, kill them with no or minimal legal consequences. The story is the same with bikes.

By the way, who were the first roads paved for? Bikes.

We are paying. In fact, your federal gas tax goes for roadways we are not permitted to ride on (except for VERY rare circumstances). Check out the funding sources for your local roadways. In most locales the vast majority of roadway funding comes from general taxes (income, property, parcel, sales) that are more or less paid per person, not per mile. Since most cyclists are traveling far fewer miles than our motoring cousins, we are actually paying FAR more $ per mile than motorists. Also, consider that we do almost no damage to the road surface nor do we create damaging particulate air pollution. Bottom line: the car-critters need to start paying their fair share. Add in the MediCare costs of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer that are caused by car use and we are really subsidizing you.