Myth versus reality of New York cycling, motoring
Mercedes’s fantasy of coked-up urban cycling and mellow urban motoring
Amazingly, they admit that their 268 horsepower machines are slower than bicycles for moving people around a city. The new lie is that their vehicles are chambers of urban relaxation, calmly piloted by zen masters who are so over that traffic they’re stuck in. Ha.
If city motorists are chill with always being stuck in traffic, why are they constantly honking their horns? I can literally hear car horns as I type this. Like every morning, car commuters are queuing up for the systematic traffic jams they inflict upon themselves. Unlike the ad’s mellow motorman hero, none of them are listening to smooth jazz and accepting the fact that their fat vehicles can not fit through the streets any faster than they do. Instead they howl and complain through their factory equipped crybaby-megaphones, all gassed-up and throwing a tantrum.
In a few minutes I’ll be coasting past them on a $125 bicycle. I won’t need to jostle with taxis, put myself in danger, or ride on sidewalks because—why the hell would I do that? It’s going to take me 25 minutes like it does every day, I’ll get a little bit of exercise without mussing my hair, and then I’ll be where I need to be.
Or take it from this guy who was riding a bicycle in New York long before luxury foreign suvmakers perceived bicycling Americans as a threat to their business:
Actual New Yorker’s experience riding on bicycles and in motorcars
“It releases endorphins in your system or something—I don’t know, look it up.”
