The Lone Ranger and Cadel Evans Fist Fight in Fort Collins

Today 9 News featured an article about Fort Collins adding a ‘surcharge’ to tickets issued to cyclists for running stop signs. How timely! I just posted the other day about stop signs (that universe sure is clever.) On top of the fine, cyclists will now be expected to pay a $35 surcharge comparable to motorists who apparently have been paying this fee all along. The notion of a traffic ticket ‘surcharge’ conjures up interesting images of blue uniform clad Ticketmaster employees running around beating concert goers with Billy clubs. Apparently the surcharge helps to raise money to fund traffic enforcement officers.

Now after having written one post about stop signs just the other day, I don’t intend my next post to rail on about the same subject, however I do find it intriguing that the City of Fort Collins adds surcharges to its traffic tickets, and additionally has been levying them discriminately against motorists and not cyclists for the same offense. For starters, if you need $35 more bucks just raise the fine $35. Doesn’t that make more sense than adding a ’convenience charge’ or ’handling fee’ to the ticket itself? Who are you really fooling with that? Secondly, if the law states that cars and bikes are to have the same access and privileges to public roads then why on earth would you ever enforce the rules differently for one group over the other? As if car-bike relations aren’t already strained enough. It is exactly this sense of inequity between the two groups that rises to the top of the car vs. bike arguments most often.

One of the chief complaints frequently tossed out there by the ‘bike detractor’ faction alleges that cyclists want equal access to the roads yet do not abide by the rules the same as cars do. (I’m not even going to go down the rabbit hole of assumptions implied in this sentiment, insisting that cars are somehow proportionally more law abiding than cyclists. To me the cyclist running a stop sign is the equivalent of the motorist’s speeding. It can be dangerous but generally is harmless enough and enough people do or have done it to make complaining about it just a wee bit hypocritcal.) To the point of the matter, however, this complaint often is supported by numerous claims of cyclists running lights, weaving through traffic, not stopping at stop signs, killing babies, dealing drugs, ruining the traditional American nuclear family and generally carrying on as if better than everyone else in 4 wheels. Given the tone of some of these arguments, one might ask, "Why such a sense of indignation at these actions?" I would contend that the primary motivation for this particular sense of injury stems less from a consciousness of right and wrong and a desire to uphold the letter of the law, but rather comes from sheer, bitterly green envy. Car drivers aren’t appalled at the shocking disregard for the law manifested in the behaviors of some cyclists because they are so endeared to the law itself. No one loves following the rules that much! They’re jealous that inside their conspicuous, license-tagged, 4 wheeled contraptions they cannot pull off similar displays of carefree capriciousness.

Americans love their bad boys: James Dean, Elvis, John Dillinger (movies about John Dillinger), Bat Man, every Bruce Willis movie character, Jules and Vincent from Pulp Fiction, the Terminator, that Johnny Depp Pirate, Dirty Harry, etc. At some level we all have a deep seeded dislike for authority. It is in our heritage, this is after all the country that told Britain to F-off in the great revolution of 1776, and we light off millions of exploding homage’s to these rebels every year on the 4th of July . Once we moved beyond the Lone Ranger, Zorro, Davy Crocket era of lone wolves on horse back, we replaced the horse with Easy Rider, the Bandit, Magnum PI, Knight Rider, Ricky Bobby: we love our daredevils to drive or ride big powerful machines. Trans Am’s with V8 engines or fancy new Audi’s transporting and ninja kicking the shit out of Europe: we are too fast and too furious bitchezz you better recognize! What’s the best part about James Bond? The brand new $1M car and the requisite chase scene through traffic in exotic, foreign locales where he summarily crashes the hell out of it. And as much as Americans have an affinity for the wonton reckless renegade, our inner Mad Max if you will, most American motorists I would argue, secretly want to slip into this persona and become these characters each and every time they get into their car. If it weren’t for Gone in 60 Seconds sales of the new Mustang would not have been so high, likewise for the Fast and the Furious and the Mitsubishi Evo or Subaru STI. I have no data to support these observations but it seems pretty closely linked to me. So when sitting in traffic, caffeinated out of their minds, revving the grossly unnecessary 420hp engine in their new 2 ton Infinity SUV, the American motorist literally red lines at the sight of some spandex clad, hipster, punk ass cyclist cruising by and blowing a stop sign. Their inner Mad Max goes ballistic “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! I WANT TO DO THAT TO, I HATE EVERYTHING, I HATE THOSE CYCLISTS!” Essentially, ‘cyclists don’t obey laws’ translates to ‘why do they get away with the crap that I want to do but can’t.’

So the idea of enforcing this division by having two separate ticket or fine structures only engenders more hostilities and resentment (just read the comments under the article to see for yourself.) Placing cyclists and motorists onto an even plane in the eyes of the law will at least start to help reduce the perception that one group is getting away with something the other group is not. This unfortunately will still not address the sense of entitlement that some motorists have for public roads that they for some reason cannot see extending to cyclists, but that’s likely a topic in response to a future 9 News story. In the meantime, don’t run any stop signs in Fort Collins or it could cost you $35 more bucks and I might have to come up there and ninja kick your ass.