Who needs the manners?

I haven't biked to work since week 32 of my pregnancy, which, though understandable, still makes me really lame since I work about two miles from our house. In Boston I limited my biking to after work and weekends, but I was a hard core bike commuter last year while working in San Francisco. BARTing, busing, and biking every day through wind and rain and rush hour in the city taught me something very important: roads are built with nothing but automobiles in mind, and that makes it scary as hell for anyone else. Even bike lanes are dangerous - try biking the Embarcadero towards the city at rush hour. You have an equal chance of being doored or cut off by cars parked to your right as you do being run over or cut off by the speed racers heading home on your left. Add a few feet of water, like last Spring, and you get to test your tires and brakes against the flood, too. Not cool.

The only times I have felt truly safe and protected biking in Boston or San Francisco has been on Critical Mass rides. And I think that is sort of the point...bikers on our own are an endangered species, en masse we have power - power and an amazing sense of peacefulness. It is so QUIET on those rides, and so fast...even with thousands of people it takes only a matter of minutes for everyone to get through each intersection.

There's been a lot of anti-CM press in the Chronicle lately, stemming from a run-in with a mini-van during last month's ride. There are certainly some righteously out of control folks who ride Critical Mass - biker zealots of sorts who see it as a really aggressive political action. But that's a really small fraction of the whole. Overall, I'm sure most riders are more like me - they just want to be recognized as part of a large group - a group that should have more rights to the street. The last Friday of every month should not be the only time that it is safe to ride a bike on the city streets. Interestingly, it is the only day that it is really not an advantage to try too drive your car down Market Street. Deal with it.

Critical Manners is a bicycling group that seeks to offer an alternative to the monthly Critical Mass demonstration rides by biking single file and following all the traffic rules designed to keep cars rolling and bikers on the defensive. I think it is ridiculous. I admit, I was scared to find myself inadvertently leading the pack through a red light by city hall last fall, but, then again, who are those lights really made for? And how relevant are they when thousands of bikers are clogging both lanes of the street? I don't see how a single lane of timid bikers convinced that following traffic rules makes the city safe for bikers makes any impact on public planning or commuting issues.

And that's my rant from the nursing bed. Someday Silas and I will ride Critical Mass together...and I'll feel safer doing that then biking with him to work any day.