Big yellow taxi

Because the previous entry got too long, I'm devoting a separate entry to my own experiences with anti-bicycle violence.

The problem is far worse in the suburbs than in the cities (of course), and I never had this problem until 2001 - like so many other problems that only began in 2001. (Ahem.) Usually they follow a pattern of a near-miss caused by an idiot in an oversized vehicle talking on a cell phone, who after almost causing a wreck flaps their arms like it was my fault. But at least thrice, it was clearly malice from the very beginning.

9/4/01: The first and most serious incident happened when I was run off the road by a white SUV and strained my knee. This was clearly a deliberate act.

If the system was as zealous in going after who did this as they are in going after victimless crimes, they'd stop every SUV of that type and interrogate each driver until they found the assailant. Seriously. They would. I almost had to take a polygraph in 6th grade when some twerp wrote "FUCK" on the chalkboard in math class, and the dust from the chalk to write it was far less of a contributor to climate change than even one SUV is. If I could be dragged out of class over something like that, then why can't they stop every SUV in the area that looked like the one that hit me until an arrest could be made?

9/12/03: I was run off the road by a van for a local business. This episode was overshadowed, being in the fascism wave that dominated the middle of this decade and all. I got the license plate number (which was later lost), but naturally nothing was ever done about it by the authorities.

The third incident (the only one of the 3 that was in a city area) was just this past Saturday. After Ploptoberfest, I got off the Taylor-Southgate Bridge in Newport, Kentucky, and bipped onto 3rd Street. A taxi roared up behind me and screeched to a halt just a couple feet before hitting me on my bike. This too was an intentional, malicious act. At night, 3rd Street swarms with taxis - which are already allowed to break the law by having a current license plate on the back and an older plate on the front, or plates from both Kentucky and Ohio. (Both of these practices are illegal.) The glut of big yellow taxis is because they (as the song says) paved paradise and put up a shopping complex hardly anyone goes to - so hardly anyone rides in the taxis either. (Around here, you hardly ever see taxis where you need them the most.)

I got the license plate number of the taxi that almost hit me, in case the authorities are interested. Which they're not, because if they were, they would have already gone after the taxis for the license plate violations. (If you're a regular car owner, try putting an outdated plate on the front of your car, or try using plates from 2 different states. See how many microseconds that lasts.)

In all 3 of these cases, aggravated vehicular assault was committed. Especially when it's such a mismatch as a bike versus an SUV, they need to start coming down hard on this crime. There ought to be stiff prison terms. If they can put people behind bars for buying more than 9 grams of cold medicine a month, then they can do the same with people who wield a weapon that weighs thousands of pounds.