Instead of screaming into the ever-expanding void of Twitter, I bring you a weekly highlight reel of what it’s like going places in Greater Hartford when one is gloriously car-free. These posts are on a slight time delay because nobody needs to know exactly where I am when I am there.

I hadn’t been in a car since early July. Had no need to be. Train, bus, bike, and my own feets served me well.
Then, in the last week, I was in three different people’s cars (two offered and the other was by request because I wanted to attend an event in a community center that is not centered in the community, as in, there are no sidewalks, bad lighting, no seating at bus stop, poor bus service, and on a street with high speeds making it undesirable for me to bike on) and my big takeaway from it is that when it came time for me to exit the vehicles, all I could think of was Ab Fab and how I had best remember how to not eat pavement.

EXPLAIN THIS PLEASE 

How is something a bike route if it’s just a sidewalk next to a school? I feel like I’m completely missing something. This is at M.D. Fox Elementary School. Where does it start? End? Is it just on the sidewalk around the school? Does installing this sign check a box that absolves someone from doing actual bike infrastructure? Is this aspirational?

AND ALSO, THIS: 

Could we have these, but on the outside of a bike lane?
What are we protecting this lot from?!

UGLY PEDESTRIANS

A friend recently got into a little bike lane discussion with an automobilist who beached his vehicle where it ought not be. This person asked the driver if his car was a bicycle, and when he said yes, this person replied something to the effect of “you have an ugly bicycle.”

I’m still laughing.

So, I’m stealing this.

Here are a few ugly pedestrians I encountered this week.

This one. . . I mean. . . really?! There’s an entire empty lot, and no, it was not full when the driver arrived because I watched him do this, casually get out, and amble across the street to a nail salon. The motorist was an elder, so I decided to not get up in his face to tell him that he had just gotten out of an ugly pedestrian.

This one. . . is it an ugly pedestrian or ugly bicycle? These two are inconveniencing everyone, but not the preciousss cars. Never that. I don’t know what Xfinity emergency was happening where they had to abandon their vehicles here instead of in the apartment building parking lot. The people who put these here were nowhere to be seen, so I couldn’t tell them how ugly their bicycles were, but I did send the pic to Hartford 311 which is probably not functioning on any level but always good to make sure there’s a record for if a cyclist has to swerve around this kinda mess and gets run over. Oh, and this was on Woodland Street, where there are lots of elderly folks with wheelchairs and walkers — so while I could turn sideways and get through on the sidewalk, a lot of the residents living right there would not have had the same ability.

THE GARBAGE THAT LIVES RENT-FREE IN MY HEAD

After five months of being able to do whatever, the driver who killed Bob O’Neal in West Hartford last June was finally arrested.

There are so many things broken about this system. One is that you can murder someone — and I’m not interested in the legal definition here — and keep hold of that weapon, so long as you use a car instead of a gun. I do not understand why people are not stripped of their driver’s license when they seriously injure or kill someone. Driving is a privilege, not a right, and yet society treats it as a given. The West Hartford case is not unique. Those who murder pedestrians, unless those victims are police, are permitted to roam around until they turn themselves in. In this case, the assailant was known immediately. It was not a hit and run that needed special investigation.

There’s the absolute grossness of how the driver knew — for six months before crash — she was experiencing medical issues that suggested that in no fucking way should she be behind the wheel of a car, and there’s the system that fails to screen for problems like this. Our license renewal is a joke. When I updated my license last year all I needed to do was pay money. It’s a way to raise revenue. It’s not a way to determine who belongs on the road. I was not given a knowledge test or a road test; I was given no vision test or any other exam to decide if I was safe enough to operate dangerous heavy machinery. Our system asks individuals to make far too many choices with enormous consequences because nobody has the guts to say that not everyone should be driving. Combine that with poor infrastructure, and you have the capacity for drivers to easily kill with their cars.

There’s the way this arrest will be used to show how amazing law enforcement is . . . and that needs so much more discussion than it receives. The arrest, coming FIVE months, after the crime is in itself nothing spectacular. It does not undo O’Neal’s death. Does the remote possibility of arrest and what’ll likely be not a whole lot of prison time, if any, convince motorists to drive more respectfully? I think we would’ve seen a reduction in traffic violence if that were at all the case.

With this arrest, some will be happy to say “see, we solved the problem,” as if hitting an elderly driver with a small fine and maybe jail time is more effective than dealing with West Hartford Center’s stroad situation. Or, we will see this particular driver made an example of and given a steep sentence, while West Hartford’s stroad situation goes untouched.

And we will see the pedestrian and cyclist death count continue to go up while those in power find ways to deflect responsibility, asking for awareness campaigns and looking for how they can get police to ticket more often.

The question is, do we give license to those in power to get away with maintaining the status quo, or do we continuously let them know that there is a way to approach this issue that does not require anyone to figure out the psychology behind why and how people behave? That changing how roads are designed won’t fix everything, but it’ll fix so much more than the thoughts & prayers & wishes approach they insist on?

WHAT NEXT

Join the Hartford Bike Party for a five mile bike ride delivering food to four Little Free Pantries in Hartford on Sunday, November 20th. Start at 1 PM at 1400 Park Street.