Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 54)  The Pallet Theory / countering the threat of violence

With extremely aggressive drivers, I held a screwdriver in either in my right hand for a throw, or moved it to my front left, letting them know they were going to be damaged … and that works!

… a threat is the only thing that works against an assaultive law-breaking motorist.

There are two rules that govern threats towards cars.

Rule 1 for activists: Don’t be afraid to damage an assaultive car for easy identification by the police. Caution: my recommendation says; do not damage the person … only their property … as an activist, you must refuse to die with your head stuck in someone’s muffler cage, on the other hand, it is not your goal to cause injury to an assaultive driver. Your purpose is to insult them and scare them as much as they do you.

I don’t carry a gun, but I think it would be legal to shoot a hole in an assaulter’s car. I tore off side-view mirrors a couple times and I think damaging property in this case is totally justified.

I think it’s important to mark the car, and I’ll tell you why … those drivers don’t give one pig-shit if you lay doubled-over on the road skinned bare like a run-over dog. And those guys do every single day … pick up a newspaper … a cyclist is struck by a car once every 20 seconds in America … bicycling remains a high-risk numbers game with no protection provided by government or law … you are left to your own wits to survive.
 
The next thing to remember is Rule #2: Threatening to damage an assaultive car is part and parcel to the Pallet Theory.
 
The Pallet Theory is a bedrock activist tool; it says every sober car driver will slow down and carefully drive around a wooden pallet lying in the street.

Car drivers carefully move around a pallet to avoid possible damage to themselves or their vehicle … and, by strange alignment of stars, they don’t blare a horn or hysterically wave their finger at the pallet … nor does the driver get out of the car and threaten to attack the pallet.

So the question becomes, if they drive carefully and act decently around a wood pallet, why don’t they do the same for a bicycle?

It’s simple; the Pallet Theory is honest truth about the road: CAR DRIVERS ARE MORE CONCERNED WITH THEIR PROPERTY THAN WITH YOUR SAFETY… and the cyclist can make themselves equal to a wood pallet by offering up a threat.

… therefore when the cyclist adds ‘threat-of-damage’ to the equation, the car driver suddenly thinks twice about tailgating and whizzing closely past a cyclist, and thus, the cyclist’s safety becomes a factor in car-driver behavior.

Suffice to say however, car drivers will only see a crazy bicycle rider threatening people on the road … and this is precisely because the government refuses to take a public stand on your behalf …

… the government is responsible for driver’s education classes and responsible for issuing driving permits … YET they say nothing about bicycles during this education except to tell drivers: ‘the bicycle must stay outta the way,’ and this is a blatant misrepresentation of constitutional law.

In a very real sense, the government is engaged in conspiracy and racketeering by refusing to grant minimal education to the driving-public over the issue of bicycle safety. And this falls under the RICO statutes because the politicians and judges and police are receiving money while allowing criminal behavior to continue without deterrence ... and I'm sure a creative federal prosecutor has thrown similar charges on undesirable folks for much less death and carnage than bike riding..

… none-the-less, implementing the Pallet Theory puts the government into the bike-protection business and the news gets around to the punks-and-drunks that you’re being watched by the police, and then bad driving disappears off your regular route … in fact, accidents will be reduced on your regular route.

Put that goat in your pipe and smoke it.

Accidents are reduced on a bicycle activist’s regular route once the pallet theory is put into practice. Suddenly every guy whose car got clunked, now has perfect vision and can see you every time. The regular drunks know to stay off that road too.

… it’s the truth: accidents are reduced by hard bicycle activism.

… unfortunately, the larger population will find total disdain in your person, because they believe it is their government-protected right to drive any way they want around a bicycle … but mostly they dislike people that threaten the local code.

Bicycle activism can never gain support from the local code without government involvement … and therefore the activist’s work becomes a cat chasing its tail … the more you resist incumbent car-driver endangerment, the more reason the government will have to push your dumb ass off the road…

… the road is ruled by ‘might-makes-right,’ and the government supports this attitude ... as long as it comes from the car and not the bike.

Chapter 55)  Another police tailgater
Index of chapters