I've been following the whole Critical Mass thing and I have to say that people are pretty hilarious.
If you've been off the grid or normally don't have time for such things, Real Change and The Stranger have had the best reporting. Basically, the big rolling fuck you to anyone who drives a car known as Critical Mass did one of their drive throughs and a driver got annoyed and decided to run a few of them over. There was an ugly scene, and then the driver somehow avoided being charged with attempted vehicular homicide, which is essentially what someone who attempts to run a human being over with his car should get, even if said human being is a bit snarky.
It's the details that make me smile.
Cyclists roll up to block an intersection for the group, as is typical in these things. Driver tells cyclist he's late for a reservation. Cyclist retorts that if he'd left fifteen minutes ago, he'd be on time. Driver floors it. Cyclist takes ride on hood.
It gets better. Driver later tells police he floored the vehicle in self-defense because the skinny fucking vegans threatened to overturn his car.
Not surprisingly, skinny fucking vegans don't take this very well. In fact, they take it very badly. The driver pulls over after half a block, realizing he'd just done something incredibly impulsive and stupid. He's freaked out and in tears.
Skinny fucking vegans beat him up. They smash his windows. They beat him bloody with a bike lock. They slash his tires.
I figure there were at least three factors that predispositioned the skinny fucking vegans to act like jerks. First, as I have said, Critical Mass is basically one big self-righteously rolling fuck you. Adrenaline is part of the deal. Second(ly), the guy floors it and provokes every fight or flight response they've got. We're talkin' pure reptilian brain here. Finally, they're a mob — and I mean this in the best sense of the word — and operated under mob psychology. The guy's lucky these were skinny fucking vegans, or he'd of been killed.
Hilariously, one protester later said: We slashed his tires "to stop an out of control driver from hurting anyone else."
That's really good.
Driver, I think, should have been charged. Cops might hate Critical Mass, but that's no excuse. It's not reasonable to run people over just because they're sort of being assholes. But no one here looks real good. If I were any of these people, I'd want to pretend the whole thing never happened.
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This sounds like a very unfortunate incident. I sure don't see how they arrest bike riders but not the "ran a guy over" car driver. That's pathetic and borders on encouraging future assaults.
From having joined a few here in Vancouver, I like the parts of Critical Mass that are fun, rather than confrontational. There's a lot of joy in riding with friends in big enough groups so you don't have to worry all the time about being murdered by cars.
Of course it could be said that every time people drive cars it's a big "fuck you" to... everyone they encounter – other drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists, poor people in every country with oil to wage war over, etc. So a group bike-ride can be seen as a "fuck you" back I guess.
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