Bicycles competing with cars makes no sense

You walk into a bank and see thousands of dollars inside a vault with the doors wide open, while a 39-cent pen is chained to the counter. Does that make sense?

You commonly see expensive cars sitting outside homes, while worthless junk in boxes sits inside the locked, two-car garage. Does that make sense?

So does this make sense: A familiar sight on rural roads is a 160-pound person with a piece of plastic strapped to their head, riding a bicycle while sharing the road with 4,000-pound machines equipped with headlights, taillights, turn signals, front and rear bumpers, side crash barriers and air bags, traveling four times faster than the bicycle, with the machine operator further protected by a mandatory seat belt.

“But ... but, we have the legal right to ride our bicycles on those roads,” you say. OK ... but does it make sense?

Larry Ritland

Cedar Rapids