Why Cyclists Shouldn't Break Road Rules

I believe that bikes are important.  I believe this because cars are bad.  Cars are bad mainly because they fill the air with exhaust fumes.  They are also terribly convenient, and this is why we need to ride bikes: to show people who drive cars that bikes are pretty convenient too.  I am using simple words and short sentences because I want the man on the road bike who ran five red lights in a row in front of me tonight to understand how much of an irredeemable fuck he is. 

Every cyclist, deliberately or not, is raising public awareness for other cyclists just by riding their bike in traffic.  You can all be proud of yourselves.  But if you break the road rules in front of cars; if you endanger other people’s lives by not waiting at the lights; if you have the fucking temerity to think that getting home thirty seconds earlier is worth tarnishing the public image of every other cyclist who you share the road with, worth undoing all the good us other cyclists do to show drivers that cycling is a viable option, then fuck you. 

You have no right to be proud that you ride a bike.  You have no right to act like riding a bike frees you from some environmental karmic debt.  We’d all be better off if you gave away your bike and drove round in a four-wheel-drive.

(Of course, if that guy was rushing to his wife in labor or suchlike, I’m totally off base and arrogant.  But I doubt it.)