Sunday, April 26, 2009

Should Bicyclists Trust God? An Experiment

Hey, is anyone out there? Been out on the bike a handful of times so far this year and yesterday went 20 miles and today I plan to head out for 15. I know I'm a fair weather biker so I don't really think of blogging much until the weather gets nicer and I'm actually out on my bike, but I still think it's fun to blog about biking once in a while.

I thought I'd see if anyone's still reading by posting about a personal project, an experiment if you will, I'm doing this year in relation to biking.

If you do any amount of biking on the roads, you will eventually experience a car horn from behind.

Now of course, there are the drivers who give what my husband and I consider a nice warning beep of their horn. You know, the kind where they lightly tap at their horn and their only intent is to make sure we know they are behind us and are about to pass us. And they usually wave when passing.

But then there are the drivers who blast their horn and speed past and sometimes accompany this with foul gestures and comments. Last year, I started trying to see if I could make any assumptions about the people who are nasty about it by noticing things about them and at one point I was taking a look at the type of car. For example, were people who drove SUV's more likely to be rude?

But after my experience last year, I want to use something else as my experimental variable. I want to test and see if the rude people are more likely or less likely to have an "In God We Trust" license plate.

Now, I'm not making any particular judgement of anyone, I just think it would be interesting data to collect. No matter how it turns out, that doesn't mean I can truly correlate it with anything scientifically.

Hell, I'm just thinking it will be fun, that's all.

As of today, the score is 1-1, with two nasty car horn blasts so far this riding season, one without the religious license plate and one with the plate.

If you would like to participate in my experiment, feel free to join in.

4 comments:

The New Albanian said...

Holy Toledo, has it been that long since I posted here?

Excellent experiment, Deb. I will try to contribute data.

jon faith said...

Roger, will your experiment be conducted on that gruelling eight block course form your front porch to Bank Street: be careful, old boy!

Tommy2x4 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tommy2x4 said...

careful...readers might rally their buddies to tell you how great that person is and how as a religous person that you as a bicyclist should mind yourself...

i personally have thought about this topic, except i based on the people who run the fish emblem on the back of their car.

i'm pretty sure there are idiots on both sides of your hypothesis.. good luck with the experiment...

edited for reading errors...doh!

9:06 AM