A Newspaper Calls Out Its City's Drivers

"In a city plagued with reckless driving..."

Would you expect an article about your city (or town), published in a local newspaper, to begin with that phrase?

Well, a piece in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel began that way.  In many other American locales, even those that are supposedly "bike-friendly," drivers would howl in protest, and cancel subscriptions and, if they're business owners, advertisements.  I've never been to Milwaukee, so I won't speculate on whether motorists have more or less sway than they have in other places.  Even if they have less influence, it's still surprising to see an article (not an editorial) begin with such a phrase.

The focus of the article is how reckless and simply entitled drivers are undermining the city's efforts to build a network of bike lanes.  In particular, it described the ways in which drivers have made pedaling  along North Avenue, in the words of longtime cyclist Lydia Ravenwood,  "worse with the bike lane."

I would echo a similar complaint about some streets in my hometown, New York City, that have bike lanes.  Sam Mattson, another longtime cyclist, gives a reason that any New York cyclist could give about too many of our lanes:  Drivers treat them like parking lanes. (He doesn't mention something I would add:  Taxi and ride share drivers pick up and discharge passengers in the bike lanes.)  But he also adds a detail that relates to the article's headline:  Drivers deliberately smash into the concrete planters that separate the bike from the traffic lane. 

A cyclist on East North Avenue, Milwaukee.  Photo by Mike De Sisti for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

If you ask me, even if those motorists are skilled enough to effect a "controlled" crash, they are as reckless--with the lives of cyclists and pedestrians as well as themselves--as drug- or alcohol-addled hooligans who plow along the street at twice the speed limit and just "happen" to knock over the barriers.