I live in Seattle too. I've been here for twenty years, driving and biking and walking, and by far the most real close calls I've had have been on foot, from ca

I live in Seattle too. I've been here for twenty years, driving and biking and walking, and by far the most real close calls I've had have been on foot, from cars. A few on my bike too—in particular, I was hit by a Porsche SUV U-turning out of a parallel parking spot last fall, and received permanent ligament damage in my shoulder. > Seattle drivers seems to understand the idea of pedestrians. I used to have to cross a semi-busy road twice a day on my walk to and from work. I crossed at a marked crosswalk, but about 90% of the time cars would not stop unless I forced them to by entering the road myself (essentially playing chicken with them), and more than once they blasted through the crosswalk while I was still in it, speeding past inches from me. Never mind that the law says pedestrians have the right of way. This experience is not unique to the crosswalk in question—in fact, it is essentially universal. I find your assertion that "Seattle drivers seems [sic] to understand the idea of pedestrians" utterly baffling. Perhaps you are posting from a parallel universe, or one of the wealthy outlying neighborhoods that are Seattle in name only. > the "self-entitled idiots" that I see on a weekly/daily basis, for more than a decade, are bicyclists. Just today, on my bike ride home on the stretch of the Burke Gilman between Fremont and Ballard, a red Jeep Cherokee blasted through a stop sign right in front of me, without so much as tapping the brakes. The onus was on me to account for his gross negligence, despite having the right of way. This sort of thing is so common I barely notice it anymore. -- So yes, I'm sure we can both fire off anecdotes about modal conflicts all day. I'm sure everybody who lives in a big city can. But I challenge you to show me with data that bicycles are any meaningful fraction of the public health hazard that large pickup trucks are. And, frankly—based on two decades of commuting throughout the city in all three modes at issue here—I would suggest that you are being intellectually dishonest with yourself regarding proportionalities. I can recall only a single instance where a cyclist put me in any real danger, and I would take being hit by a cyclist any day over meeting the six foot fascia of a modern pickup at the speed limit plus fifteen (since, as I'm sure we both know, nearly every driver exceeds the speed limit on a habitual basis).