The Birth of the "Urban Cool"

(apologies to Miles Davis)

I read this LTE from the good doctor, and liked his catchy buzz-phrase. I think I'll use it.

WashPost

As a board-certified anesthesiologist, I can attest to the fact that the blunt trauma and internal injuries that a pedestrian, inline skater or, yes, bicyclist, would sustain in an accident with an automobile, even at urban crawl speeds, will be uniformly fatal, given the mismatch in the inertial mass of the two.

Why D.C. officials and the "urban cool" haven't studied this phenomenon or found it intuitively obvious is a mystery to me ["D.C. Bike Sharing Kicks Into High Gear," Metro Aug. 13]. A photo accompanying that article, showing Ellen Jones, transportation director for the Downtown Business Improvement District, riding in traffic and dwarfed by the sheer tonnage of the vehicles around her, should scream "death wish" to any rational individual. This is why the SmartBike DC program is such a bad idea.

JAYESH DAYAL

Potomac

BikeShare seemed to work in Copenhagen . . . where there were separate bike ROADS. Too bad libtards here didn't notice that little detail. "This decision is sure to cost many lives." Who was it that said that, again?