by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
“You own a car and not the road” is something the great majority of motorists need to remember. They seem to consider that only they, because they pay, in many countries, road tax and such, have a right to use the roads. Please note: bicycles and cyclist were here before you and roads were originally built for horse and cart (they also did not and do not pay road tax).
Not only have I seen it in this country how motorists “hate” having cyclists on the road – not that cyclists endear themselves really to motorists by the way that they, the cyclists, behave at times – I have been in cars where the drivers have actually said that cyclists have no right to be on the road with words such as “they don't pay any tax” or “they don't have any insurance”, etc. and the fact that cycle lanes are made for them really enrages them.
You own a car, not the road, remember that. The road is there for all, including horses, pedestrians and cyclists. You pay road tax because cars, trucks and lorries cause more damage to roads than do bicycles. It is also you, as car owners, who demand ever better and bigger and faster roads; cyclists have no such demands and problems.
It would also, in my opinion, good if car owners and -drivers would consider that they may be, one day, for whatever reason, having to use a bicycle themselves. How will they think then?
Sooner or later the use of the motorcar may be a thing of the past and that simply for the very fact that gasoline is going to get dearer due to the raw material, namely oil, getting more expensive because it is becoming rarer and more difficult to bring up to the surface and to produce.
When an imperial gallon of gas hits the ten, fifteen or even twenty pound Sterling mark I just wonder how many will still be able to drive their cars and they would therefore do well to consider that they may be cyclists themselves sooner rather than later.
An imperial gallon in December 2010 reached the dizzy heights of six pounds Sterling and over and the predictions of the members of the Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security may come true that a gallon will be hitting fifteen to twenty pounds in the next couple of years.
As said, with costs like that there will be a lot of people, a lot of ordinary motorists, who will no longer be able, financially, to drive their cars, and any biofuel that can be used straight ways in ordinary cars is still a long way off. And that just aside from the fact that that stuff will, probably, be even more in cost.
The era of cheap oil is becoming history soon, so it would appear, and motorists who currently think that they own the roads better rethink for they, themselves, could soon be on an iron horse rather than in a car.
You own a car, not the road...
© 2011
