War on cars, bicycles and... wheelchairs

Maybe you haven't noticed but there's war on cars going on practically everywhere. Watch out, they may come to your house and take your car away too! That's probably the impression you could have after watching this ridiculous video:

War on cars! - brought to you by Ford and GM

No, seriously. There's a "war on cars" and there should be. These metal boxes have been dominating our cities for decades. Unfortunately, judging from the evidence you can find on pretty much daily basis, it's more of a cold war, rather than a full-scale thermonuclear conflict.

This "war" boils down to our wishes that drivers don't kill us when we share the road. And to our government pretending they do anything about it. And media, reporting that it was a "car that jumped the curb and drove into the store front window" - like the driver was never there. And police, addressing sometimes problems from the wrong end of spectrum. Just like this case of bicyclist arrested in my town for running a stop sign and "assault with a deadly weapon" (a bicycle!).

This example is quite extreme as this cyclists was clearly guilty for not submitting to police and crashing into another cyclist (another police officer!), but it makes me think why would police even focus on stopping one cyclist crossing a street on a designated bike path and not stopping at a stop sign? Sure, you would say that signs are there to be followed and he could endanger someone. But it's unlikely he would endanger anyone except himself, should he crash into a car. It also makes me think, where's police when I see drivers notoriously ignore stop signs or "no turn on red" signs every single day? You bet they can endanger someone with their 3000 lbs metal boxes.

Don't believe me? Ask Kyle Wolfe who was hit by a SUV just because he couldn't cross the street fast enough. On top of that, he got a ticket for "disobeying the traffic signal". All that because Kyle uses a wheelchair to move around. In the time of "war", police is supposed to ticket bad drivers, including those impatient ones who would rather mow down a man on a wheelchair than wait extra 10 seconds to let him cross the road.

This "war" continues. We will surely hear more about the collateral damage it does to pedestrians, cyclists and people on wheelchairs.

Ok, now referring back to the above video - do you feel like William Wallace and scream "Freedom!" when you get into your car and drive to work in morning traffic? Or do you sigh "Freedom, finally" when you arrive home after being stuck in evening traffic for the last hour?