Et tu, NPR?

As cyclists, plenty of people out there hate us, but we can always count on the communists at National Public Radio to have our backs, right?

Wrong!

Any walk through downtown demonstrates that cyclists think they're above the law. Does that explain @lancearmstrong ?
— Scott Simon (@nprscottsimon) June 26, 2014

Not only is the underlying "logic" of this tweet completely stupid, but invoking comparisons to "Lance Armstrong" is the lowest form of cyclist baiting, as anyone who has had it shouted at them from a car window will attest.

In any case, the only way to answer Mr. Simon's question is with another question:

Any listen to Rush Limbaugh's radio show demonstrates he's an idiot.  Does that explain you?

Inasmuch as it follows the exact same logic as Mr. Simon's initial tweet I'm sure he'll find that, if he really thinks it through, it answers his own question concerning cyclists quite satisfactorily.

This isn't to say cyclists can't be dangerous, or that some of them don't think they're above the law, because yesterday in Brooklyn a cyclist fleeing the police rammed into the back of a flatbed truck and decapitated himself.

Oh, wait a minute, I meant driver, not cyclist:

Police say that Leroy Samuel, 22, was driving a 2003 black Infiniti eastbound on the BQE when he tried to exit at Atlantic Avenue. But he collided into a flatbed truck waiting at the light.

One witness told DNAinfo, "A couple cop cars were chasing him. The lights were flashing and the sirens were on." A bicyclist said to the Post, "When he exited here he was driving 70 to 80 miles per hour, and the trailer was waiting for the light... Highway patrol was chasing him. When I went to see what happened to the driver, he had no head. His head was in the back seat. It was horrible."

If only there were some way to identify and stop potentially deadly drivers before they caused grievous bodily harm to themselves and others and put our hard-working officers of the law in harm's way.  Oh, wait a minute, there is!  If you look up this guy's license plate he had a shitload of unpaid parking tickets:

Do you think there might be a relationship between being a highly irresponsible motor vehicle owner and driving that motor vehicle in a dangerous fashion?  Because I do.  It seems to me that by the time you've run up this many parking tickets and failed to pay them the city should tow your car away and crush it up into a tiny cube.  Nine unpaid parking tickets in a four month period is a cry for help.  So maybe someone should have helped this person by impounding the car five or six unpaid tickets ago.

If you can't take care of your toys then you shouldn't be allowed to have them.

I'm tempted to say that, given the addled mental state of the typical driver, our streets are full of guided missiles.  However, implying that the way these people drive in any way qualifies as "guidance" is about as accurate as Scott Simon's fatuous Lance Armstrong comparison.  Even so, it's clearly dangerous out there, which is why would-be entrepreneurs keep coming up with stuff like this:

Backtracker is a two-part system, the front unit giving you the speed and distance of rear-approaching vehicles, and the back unit alerting motorists to your position via increasingly frequent light pulses.

Or, you could just turn your head.

But why go through all that effort when instead a display on your handlebars will tell you how far away a car is with flashing lights?

"What, turning my head a few degrees?  No, I've outsourced that tedious chore.  See, the indicator tells me how fast the car is approaching, and when the light goes from green to red I know that I've been decapitated."

Of course, if you really hate turning your head you could always just use a helment mirror, but then you wouldn't be playing with lights and radar.  "But helment mirrors are dorky!," you may be saying.  Well, yeah, sure they are, but do you think you look like less of a dork with a bunch of radar shit strapped to both ends of your bike?  Because you don't.  You're just a digital dork instead of an analog one.

By the way, I've been struggling with an editorial decision as far as which default helment mirror image to use going forward, and I'm not sure if it should be this one:

This one:

Or this one:

I'm sort of leaning towards Gandalf in the middle, but I'm still open to reader input.

Or, if you don't want to put the mirror on your helment, you can always wear it on your wrist:

I first mentioned the above product back in February of 2012, and I can't believe it still hasn't taken the cycling world by storm.

Lastly, let's all acknowledge the organizers of the Giro d'Italia for not being condescending to female cycling fans at all:

Hey girls! Who do you think is the most beautiful rider of the 2014 Giro d'Italia? With whom would you like to go out for a dinner? #giro
— Giro d'Italia (@giroditalia) June 26, 2014

Hmm, I don't know.  This is an Italian bike race, so it would be helpful to know which (if any) of the riders doesn't still live at home with his mother.  That might help the "girls" narrow it down.