A Tax On Cycling: Too Steep A Hill To Climb Or Just Around The Corner? | Forbes

As an avid cyclist, I can admit that we are perhaps the most entitled group of people on the planet. If you’ve ever operated a motor vehicle, you already know this to be true.  We demand to be treated with the respect of a vehicle and to be afforded equal protection of the laws of the road. But once we clip into our pedals, we routinely flaunt those same laws, darting among traffic, coasting through stop signs, and generally racing through the streets like Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Hell, this past summer, I finished a ride by pedaling over a two-lane bridge that serves as the final point of access to a New Jersey beach community. I did this on a Saturday. At 11 AM.  And while technically I had as much right to that bridge as any of the cars, by getting between thousands of angry Garden Staters and the start of their week-long vacations, I was just begging to get mowed down by a soccer mom in a Canyonero. The point is — I knew better, but I did it anyway.
Courtesy of stunts like mine there exists a mutual, and sometimes justified, hatred between cyclists and their four-wheeled brethren. In extreme cases, the same individual can reside on both sides of the fence – on more than one occasion I’ve spent hours pedaling next to guy on a ride, only on the subsequent drive home to hear the same guy — now behind the wheel of a 6,000 lb SUV – unleash a truly impressive string of profanities at a cyclist who dared to stray too far from the shoulder.  

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