What does "truly fit to ride bicycles" mean? If you're racing to the top of L'Alpe d'Huez, you need a finely-tuned aerobically-efficient body, as well as an expensive bike. If you're biking to work or class or the grocery store, the standards are much lower.
I would suggest that the vast majority of Americans are sufficiently fit to use their bikes for daily transportation, if they choose to do so. And if they do ride their bikes at a reasonable speed, with a reasonable level of effort, they're less likely to need those ambulances than if they drive everywhere. The infrastructure that bike advocates seek is not for the "bicycling elite" -- they can generally take care of themselves on ordinary streets and roads -- but for the ordinary bikers, who are unwilling to go head-to-head with motor traffic. It's unfortunate that Eric, who does apparently ride a bike pretty regularly, is spouting the same line as Thuy Pham-Remmele, who seems to have an unconditional hatred of bicycling in all its forms, but I've come to expect that sort of thing. Eric Westhagen wrote: > <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> > <html> > <head> > <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> > </head> > <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> > <font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Dear Matt,<br> > <br> > What percentage of Americans are truly fit to ride bicycles > regularly? > Won't that be likely to drop even lower as the average American weight > rises even more. And above the weight, who are fit cardiovascularly > to > get off on a road with a few hills and miles from home? It is one > thing to exercise where one can stop if over stressed. Sure many on > this list are probably on bikes and say they are neither pictures of > fitness or have the teenage weight they once had. But you had better > increase the ambulance squads if going out biking is pressed on the > general public. Matt, you are simply pressing for more > infrastructure > for the bicycle elite once again. But you are correct probably in > assuming that motorists might associate with motorists and, in fact > might be jealous of fit bicyclists whizzing along and wish they could > be of that small group.<br> > EW<br> > </font><br> > Matt Logan wrote: > <blockquote cite="mid:[email protected]" > type="cite"> > <pre wrap="">As someone who moved to Madison and more or less stuck to > the rules > (except for a couple years of critical mass), the largest benefit will > be to the safety of bicyclists. Beyond that, I am highly skeptical. > > I have come to realize that the public perception of bicyclists is > largely driven by the simple fact that drivers will excuse the behavior > of other drivers, but will criticize identical behavior from bicyclists. > The real solution to the perception problem is not better bicyclists, > but better bicycling infrastructure that attracts more drivers onto > bicycles more frequently. When more drivers are bicyclists too, they > tend to see things from a different perspective. > > _______________________________________________ > Bikies mailing list > <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" > href="mailto:[email protected]";>[email protected]</a> > <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" > href="http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org";>http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org</a> > > > </pre> > </blockquote> > </body> > </html> > _______________________________________________ > Bikies mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org > _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
