A recent thread on bikies and feature article in this week's Isthmus newspaper resulted in the following...
------------- Dear Isthmus Editor, Driving an automobile is a privilege, not a right. I hope we are seeing the beginning of a correction (an overdue backlash) against automobile culture and its many documented harms (social evils numerous and widely reported elsewhere including social dysfunction, pollution, sprawl, energy foreign policy, etc.). Unfortunately, the Isthmus article "Killers on the road" (June 16, 2006) focuses exclusively on deaths, ignoring all driver crimes short of murder. How many car-pedestrian, car-bike, and car-nature assaults fail to be prosecuted? The article is silent on enormously important research into this wider picture of the damage inflicted upon us all by the automobile and the lack of enforcement or prosecution of negligent drivers. The following example from this week's Madison police reports is anecdotal. (None-the-less my experiences have allowed me to form the opinion it is representative of an all-too-common abuse of automobile privileges). The report describes a car illegally failing to yield, illegally passing on the right, and causing bodily harm to a bicyclist within a well-marked crosswalk. Does a pedestrian or bicyclist have to die before a driver receives a citation and pays a statutory penalty for being negligent? Anecdote to which I refer can be read on-line at: http://www.cityofmadison.com/police/accidents/mpddata/police_d/acrpt/nolava/pdf s/00020a21.pdf. George J. Perkins ------ __o 442 Toepfer Avenue ------- _`\<,_ Madison, WI 53711-1660 ---- (*)/ (*) Home: 608-442-5558 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace Corps: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gherkinsforperkins/ BikeAid: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gherkins4perkins/ _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
