Skip to Content
Streetsblog Los Angeles home
Streetsblog Los Angeles home
Log In
Bicycling

LA Isn’t the Only Place with Bike Vs Car Incidents

Two recent road rage incidents are all over the news in Portland. Earlier this month, a drunken man on a bike became aggravated when a driver, himself a self-described bike advocate, reprimanded the cyclist for blowing a stoplight. The cyclist threatened the driver, picking up his bike and hitting the car with it. Then this week, a driver struck a cyclist and continued to drive as the victim, who escaped without serious injury, clung to the windshield.

The aggression on display is hard to fathom, but does it merit front page coverage? The breathless headlines pitting cyclists against drivers have led BikePortland's Jonathan Maus to critique the local press for exacerbating the us-versus-them mentality.

There's no excusing dangerous behavior on the road, no matter how you choose to get around, but the level of violence people are capable of when they're driving is, by the nature of the vehicle, quite considerable. As one commenter on the Oregonian's web site put it, "A drunk cyclist is clearly a menace, but a drunk driver can be downright deadly."

And then there's this story (via Tom Vanderbilt) out of Seattle last Wednesday, when a man was killed for setting up orange cones while he gardened in a traffic circle near his house, showing that people don't always have to be behind a wheel for their entitlement to the road to turn fatal.

Here's a question for Vanderbilt, whose new book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us), will be released later this month. What is it about automobiles or the road or human psychology that makes people behave like sociopaths at times?

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog Los Angeles

City Breaks Ground on Mid-City Greenways Bike/Walk Improvements

The 4+mile Mid-City Greenways project is focused on three streets: Rosewood Avenue, Formosa Avenue, and Orange Drive

July 15, 2025

SGV Connect 138 – Reclaimers Resisting Eviction

Benito Flores, one of the Reclaimers, is resisting eviction to draw attention to inequities with how housing laws are being applied to people experiencing homelessness

This Week In Livable Streets

ICE protests, Metro NoHo-Pasadena BRT meetings, Metro Sepulveda Transit meetings, and more

July 14, 2025

Koreatown Community Rallies To Reclaim Our Streets From ICE Terror

"This is an attack on Los Angeles. This is an attack on California. On all of us."

July 11, 2025
See all posts