Maybe you heard about the drunken teenagers who ran down two cyclists, one from Oak Park, in Brookfield and La Grange Park a few weeks ago, sending the Oak Parker to the emergency room.
Many things about this are puzzling. What were teenagers doing awake at 6:30 on a Sunday morning? I have never seen my 16-year-old awake that early. One reason cyclists feel relatively safe on the streets at that early hour is the sparse traffic.
And what went through the mind of these numskulls as they drew a bead on a cyclist riding a 16-pound bike and then hit the gas on their Monte Carlo? Apparently, not much. One driver blew twice the legal limit for alcohol.
This is not the only recent local incident of road-rage against cyclists. Not long ago one of our cyclists was clipped by the side view mirror of a car near the circle in Brookfield. The woman was in a big hurry to drop her kids off at Riverside-Brookfield High School. When confronted by the cyclist, she told him that she had “buzzed” him because he had been “obstructing traffic.” The cyclist is an experienced rider.
Cyclists are not the only targets. Many Oak Parkers remember the local woman who was run down by a drunk driver while jogging early one morning on an Oak Park side street. The driver was acquitted in a subsequent trial.
Too often the police assume the cyclist must be at fault in any accident. Two years ago a woman in Riverside blew a stop sign and rode into our group of a dozen cyclists. One cyclist’s head went through her windshield. No ticket was issued.
Getting a conviction is even rarer, as the case of the woman jogger shows.
What should we do about this problem? If the angry messages that zipped around local cycling internet sites about the recent incident are any indication, the two teenagers better hope that there are not any cyclists on their jury. Justice would be meted out firmly.
There may be better ways than long prison terms to raise awareness amongst drivers about cyclists. For example, the woman that buzzed the cyclist while driving her kids to school? Maybe her children should be forced to ride their bikes to school along the same street for a semester. She may come to have a different view of cyclists.
And what of the two young men who ran down the cyclists? If I were the sentencing judge, I would give them an option. One year in the state penitentiary or one year of cycling every weekend with our Lake & Harlem cycling group. We would whip them into shape in no time and show them that cyclists are not the enemy.