Spencer Windes
Cover, June 15: “I Sell the Car”
Our man in Amsterdam
In case you Santa Fe drivers occasionally spotted a male, boyish but middle-aged citizen of the Netherlands—but you can’t tell—riding a white Brompton folding bike on your public streets since May 23, it was me. I relate to a number of observations of Spencer Windes, who in the cover story of a few weeks ago had traded his car for a Chinese-made e-bike. Good for him.
When it comes to cycling on public streets, the main problem with Santa Fe is the mentality of motorists. On a daily basis, I get yelled at from open car windows, drivers blow their horns, while I show exemplary behavior as if I were a car driver sticking to all the rules of traffic and courtesy, to no avail. Few riders have the courage to ride the public streets. How do I know this? I stop and ask them, if I can.
Safety for riders comes with numbers. Once more people show the courage to ride their bicycles on public streets, it will become more safe. We become a force to be reckoned with.
As this is the tourist season, I see lots of cars flying past with tags from Texas. Funny that Windes made a similar observation, not stopping himself from sharing his many observations about the horrendous behavior of visiting Texans behind the wheel.
When Windes writes about his stay in Amsterdam, he brings up a historical protest movement from the mid-1970s dubbed “Stop de Kindermoord,” which he translates as “Stop killing our children.” This I need to clarify for you readers: Unlike in Texas where ownership and promotion of guns and war weapons is major, including killing children. In The Netherlands, then and now, no one owns guns or war weapons. This is an exclusive right of the professional Army and law enforcement—and a very few criminals. “Stop de Kindermoord” was all about the prioritizing of cars over slower traffic, which cause traffic deaths among bicyclists and pedestrians, of all ages, including children riding their bikes to school.
LOUIS M. ULJEE
ECONOMICS LECTURER,
ROTTERDAM UNIVERSITY, NETHERLANDS
