Letters for Sunday, January 20, 2019

Just curious although I agree with your letter: you said “with the proper lights, license…….”. What type of license do you need to ride a bike here?

Aloha Kakou, Aloha Sherwood,

May it be pointed out that there are a few things that FLY IN THE FACE OF REASON when it comes to riding a bike or walking on the side of the 2 HIGHWAYS on Kauai.

The Kuhio Highway (east and north) and the Kaumualii Highway (south and west), are both designated as HIGHWAYS, they are not titled or named as “Roads” or “Way”, or “Street” or any other name for a vehicle’s or bicycle or pedestrian use.

There Is a reason for this, Highways are predominantly used for “higher” if not “taller” or greater purposes…at least in most places. Taller, as in cars and trucks compared to bikes or pedestrians. And thus you hear the sayings “2 lane” Highway, even up to 3 lanes (Kuhio), and 4, 6, 8, 10, and even 12 lanes, e.g., in Los Angeles, where they are called Freeways, and like Kauai Highways are hardly such during molasses paced “Rush Hours”.

As can be clearly seen, a bike and rider, or a pedestrian, on our 2 highways, traveling at slow cycling and walking speeds where all vehicles are “racing” past them, except in the molasses rush hours, are at the mercy of their own motion safety coupled with the speeding velocity of the motor vehicles including the Big Rig trucks and big busses, whose air draft alone can push you aside or knock you down or suck you in under their tires. Or perhaps you stumble while walking, or hit a small rock or swerve to avoid one, and fall or turn into the vehicle lane.

Proof that at least 50% of the drivers using the Kuhio Hwy. think it unsafe to rely on the inside lane (coned or not) wherein the safety barrier is only the cones or a thin painted double line in the road, is that about 50% of the people drive in the outer lane of the 2 lane side of the road.

Yet you Sherwood, and 50% of the vehicle drivers and 100% of you other bicycle and pedestrian highway users believe that you with no protection vs. speeding vehicles is safe just because you have the right and choice to use the side of the roads. What value do you place on life? To some of us you are like civilians walking tall and falsely proud through a war zone during an active “fire fight”…bullets a flying by…just like the cars and trucks passing you a few feet away. Don’t you feel just a little bit foolish if not downright stupide doing that? Especially when vehicles may need to swerve into you by choice of avoiding an oncoming head on collision or error or DUI…?

Of course you have the right to ride or walk the side of the highway, you also have the right to live or die and/or gamble with your life.

In less than 3 weeks of 2019 Kauai has had 2 traffic fatalities and 1 in critical condition and who all were in heavy metal protected vehicles. What are the odds of survival of a bicyclist or a pedestrian vs motor vehicles? I’v actually had a bicyclist fall into my lane near Nukolii forcing me to choose to drive over him in my truck or swerving into the oncoming lane, thank God for all of us no vehicle was oncoming at that moment as I would have been forced to choose to squash the bicyclist into smithereens, and probably take his life and be burdened with grief and perhaps guilt over the slaughter of another human, even not at my own fault.

But you highway bike riders and walkers must also consider the inhalation you make with every breath while going along the highway. You see every passing car is “exhaling” exhaust fumes filled with Carbon Monoxide, a deadly gas that literally causes “auto” (self) asphyxiation (just like being strangled) due to the Carbon Monoxide molecule attaching to a Red Blood Cell (RBC) in our lungs where only Oxygen should attach. For some reason the Carbon Monoxide remains attached for the rest of the life of a RBC, the life of a RBC is approximately 120 days, and build up of Carbon Monoxide on RBC’s in the bloods deprives the body and its organs of Oxygen and that causes accelerated degeneration to your organs and an earlier death than nature intended. The same is true for cigarettes, the nicotine in tobacco causes blood vessel shrinkage or vasoconstriction, wherein less Oxygen gets to your organs and same accelerated organ degeneration occurs with every nicotine inhale you take and you die early, not only of just lung disease, but also other organ failure due to oxygen starvation.

Further many gasoline fuels are LEADED, we can assume that because some gas is advertised as UNLEADED, and heavy metal LEAD is in the exhaust you breathe, WHEN YOU are around vehicles especially long lines of moving VEHICLES on the highway or even some busy roads on Kauai

The exhaust coming from highway vehicles contains Lead, like heavy metal Mercury in fish, heavy metal in the human body is not capable of being excreted from ourselves and so we accumulate it in our bodies over time until it causes us severe health problems too many to mention, death is one of them.

It is foolish to walk or ride along the highways on Kauai or anywhere, take the wonderful fresh oxygen filled air, and incredible views of the Bike Path in Kapa’a and hopefully the path will be on all of Kauai one day.

You’ll have to make your choice as to use of any road or street as to safety as to injury or death or vehicle exhaust poisoning…better to err on the side of conservative…meaning don’t take a chance. In Honolulu, even at very slow speeds compared to the highways, people are killed several times per year. Be sure to wear a helmet wherever you choose to bike.

Mahalo for reading this…

Charles

So true, Gayla McCarthy.

I was raised by a pair of bigoted parents, who hated, in succession, blacks (n…rs), Italians (guineas), Jews (k..es), Mexicans (wetbacks), even the Irish (micks). My old man, who fought in WWII, was pretty much an Archie Bunker from the barrier-breaking TV show “All in the Family”, while my mom was a spitting image of Archie’s wife Edith.

I was about 12 or 13 when i began to question their beliefs. By the time I went off to college, I was fully anti-establishment and had learned to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, their financial situation, or even what foods they preferred.

I have two siblings, one of whom evolved similarly to myself and one who still acts like my old man.

Sorry to say, both my dad, now deceased, and my clueless brother were, and are, deplorable and, in my opinion, incorrigible.

You do have to wonder about politicians who change their channels when the winds blow the wrong way for their advancing politically, long after they should have known better.

Thanks for reminding us of the current state of affairs.

Wow. Two intelligent letters on the same day. Must be a full moon!

Mr. Zweibel, Santa Cruz? Don’t you know that the government did experiments with airborne LSD. This would explain a lot.