An open letter to the Long Beach Police Department

Dear Long Beach Police Department:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but if I was to blow through a stop sign/red light, or drive at night without lights, or drive on the wrong side of the road, or drive down the middle of the road blocking other traffic, or drive across junctions causing other motorists to slam on their brakes, or weave back and forth across lanes, or (and this is my all-time favourite) drive down the wrong side of the road at night with no lights, you’d be writing me tickets from now til 2020. Right?

So why is it that I see cyclists pull this shit every single week yet I never see one of your officers or patrol cars pull them over? There is frequently a police car parked near the stop sign at Ocean and Bennet Avenue. I’ve seen him go after cars that have rolled through the stop sign at gone midnight. What I’ve never seen him do is go after cyclists who’ve breezed through the stop sign regardless of traffic. Care to tell me why they’re immune?

I cannot begin to count the number of idiots who’ve shot out in front of me at the stop sign on Bayshore and East 1st Street, or casually biked towards me on Ocean, or who’ve almost been hit because they have an aversion to using lights and are to me little more than slow-moving blobs. Or the ones who seem to think that red lights are only for cars, or who believe that riding a neon-pink beach cruiser means you don’t have to worry about being maimed or killed.

Ev tells me that many cyclists act like this because we’re in a beach community. I never realised that sea air makes a bike rider impervious to being hit by a car. Or, going by the rampant stupidity I see on the roads every day, maybe it turns their brains to shit.

Maybe I’m wrong and the rules of the road don’t apply to cyclists, which frankly I’d be OK with if it wasn’t for the fact that by law I’m to blame if I hit one, regardless of whether I could, say, see it, or even have a chance to react when one shoots out of a side street 10 feet in front of me. But to give irresponsible morons the run of the road and then penalise some poor bastard who runs over one through no fault of his own is ridiculous.

Despite being a menace to everything on the road, cyclists want to be treated equally with motorists and, unfortunately, the PC-happy crowd which runs Southern California have acceded to their demands with open arms. Which is why there’s now a bike lane taking up space on Second Street, meaning drivers have less space on what was already a congested road. Cyclists already have a bike lane: it’s called the pavement. Even the beach near us now has a long concrete scar running from downtown to 54th so these arses can enjoy themselves (and run down pedestrians) while we motorists sit and wait and fume on California’s pathetically inadequate road system.

And if they want to be treated equally, how about they start obeying the rules of the road like motorists have to? Even better, tax them and make them get insurance. Make them get tags for their beach cruisers. Make them take a proficiency test before they can get on the road. Make them queue for hours in a cyclist-only DMV. Make them wear helmets. Put them through all the shit us motorists have to go through. But to make sure they get the equality they so desperately crave, nick some of the bastards every now and then.