I understood you the first time Doc when you wrote "...the masses of pedestrians who COULD own cars..." But thanks from the bottom of my heart for repeating yourself.

But if it makes you feel a little better I hereby extend my heartfelt thanks to all the car-owning people everywhere who stayed off Manhattan streets this weekend. I'll even thank the pedestrians for staying on the sidewalks. While I'm at it I'll also thank other motorists who drove (as I did) directly to their destinations without meandering whimsically about. And I'm sure all those people appreciate that I drive carefully, obey traffic regulations and yield to pedestrians under all circumstances.

(Tongue in cheek blows.)

Mork, summer weekends in the city are my favorite times -- everyone's gone. So I could thank the pedestrians but it would be more appropriate to thank all those people who spent hours trying to get to the Hamptons on Friday night, leaving Manhattan for the rest of us.

And Angus, since I was born in Brooklyn and have lived in NYC my entire life, I've always had the freedom of being able to walk to get milk. And the garage in my building alleviates all parking concerns. I also wouldn't call Fairway "bulk" groceries. I used to do the Costco thing but it got quite tedious, even with a car.

Where'd you find parking around Union Square?

I have an arrangement with a company that does all that for me. They get deliveries of bulk goods and store them in a handy location half a block away. If I want something, all I have to do is walk in, take it off the shelf and bring it to a clerk who scans the bar code. They even have produce and meat in handy single-meal packages. Of course they charge a premium for this, but I think it's worth it. I never have to plan my meals more than an hour or two in advance, because I can just stop in on my way home and pick up whatever I want to eat. That's what I call freedom!

You know, Spud, I'm starting to like this "Weekly Freedom" idea...

So Spud, when you're out tooling around, don't forget to say thanks to all of the pedestrians.

Incidentally, after I got rid of my car and moved back to New York in 2000, I felt a tremendous amount of freedom: freedom from worrying about gas, repairs and maintenance, freedom from worrying about killing someone, freedom from dealing with parking, freedom to go pick up a quart of milk, or even to exercise, without having to get in the car and drive somewhere. I never felt more restrained and confined than when I had to lug that thing around.

I'll start: This weekend I drove my car to Randall's Island and hit two large buckets of balls at the driving range there. That freed me from shlepping my clubs on a bus down to Chelsea Piers and liberated me from the confines of my apartment to allow a beautiful morning of fresh air and exercise. Monday (Labor Day) I packed up the wife and kid and cruised down to the greenmarket at Union Square, which freed my whole family from the confines of its neighborhood and allowed us to easily purchase and transport numerous bundles of organic fruits and vegetables. And Monday night I drove to the Fairway on 125th street and stocked up for the week, thus freeing me from the miserable experience of shopping at local Gristedes and Associated supermarkets, as well as from the burden of having to drag multiple bags of heavy groceries home in a shopping cart or on a bus or subway.

(Tongue-in-cheek, folks!)

Me too, and I don't even have a bike. I think there's a lot of truth in the musings above that people identify more with motorists for some reason, and it's all downhill from there. Even though we're talking about life and death and the numbers are fairly plain, people would rather go with their anecdotes, stereotypes, and general spite. For my part I've been "annoyed" by a cyclist about once a year in New York. Yeah. I'm not even kidding. Sorry to crash the "we hate each other" party, but I don't.

I should add, though, that I don't consider it my business if a cyclist breaks a traffic law. Basic familiarity with fatality and injury numbers tells me that bicycles are not a practical threat to my person, so I don't see why I should care what they do. Ignoring them is a heck of a lot easier than looking for violations and flying into a rage about cyclists every day. (I save that energy for when cars nearly kill me, a threat that is unfortunately too real.)

"Force = mass x acceleration. The impact of a fast enough bike poses as much danger as a slowly driven Mini."

(This merits exhumation.) Cars generally go faster than bikes, but we'll leave that aside for now. Okay, are we ready kids? A Mini Cooper's curb weight is 2524 lbs. A heavy bike weighs 50 lbs. Let's say our person weighs 150 lbs, and the Mini is "slowly" cruising at 20 mph.

(2524 + 150) x 20 / (150 + 50) = 267.4

Hooray, math is easy! We just calculated that our killer cyclist will have to go 267 miles per hour to have the force of that Mini. "Professor," if that was the most practical use you could make of your fancy f=ma formula, I suggest you refrain from trying to draw public safety conclusions from it.

Note, however, that all of this is highly contrary to actual typical behavior exhibited by New York bicyclists, let alone that in organized unpermitted events like Critical Mass.

Reforming one's own bicycling behavior is easy (if unpleasant), but makes only a very small difference in public opinion. In order to make real progress in this area, a large proportion of cyclists (both professional and amateur) need to engage these principles. One way to start would be for cyclist organizations like Times Up to push more responsible cycling, or for the city to require such a training course for professional cyclists.

The Manhattan Bridge tickets were for riding a bicycle in New York City.

It was last summer.

Here, I found coverage on Streetsblog...

http://www.streetsblog.org/2006/07/28/into-our-town-the-nypd-came/

But, we of the bicycling persuasion cannot deny or ignore the public relations problem we have.

One way to look at the bike v. ped conflicts is to think in terms of speed differential. While I have no data to back this up, I recall reading that one of the leading causes of crashes on limited-access highways was a high-speed differential between/among cars. (The Corzine crash would be an example.)

At the very least, we're all probably familiar with the anxiety caused by rapidly overtaking cars.

There's a similar anxiety, I think, among pedestrians in what is thought of as shared space. Something going much faster is scary. And, a wide variety of speeds among peds and bikers is going to cause actual conflict.

I think cars "escape" the criticism for a number of reasons, one of which is that cars are not considered to be like transportation. For the most part, I don't worry about cars going much faster than me when I'm on foot because that's what I expect.

One solution is clearly to get more space dedicated to bicycles (which, necessarily, would draw bicycles out of both car and pedestrian traffic). Right now, we're neither fish nor fowl. Cars don't like it when we don't follow the same rules as they do (though they happily deny us equivalent access to the right-of-way). Pedestrians don't like us because we get into their space.

Yes, part of the answer is educating pedestrians, but we've got to figure out how to win them over, too.

Perhaps your "constructive advice" is not well received because you're the one stuck in a very insular little place.

New York City cyclists are hit with nearly 50,000 summonses per year according to a recent NY Post story. That number doesn't even include the hundreds, perhaps, thousands of legally parked bikes that NYPD and Parks Dept. buzz-saw off of street furniture and cart away, seemingly at random. Any regular, law-abiding bike commuter can tell you that cyclists face a disproportionate amount of NYPD enforcement and plenty of plain old harassment.

Not so long ago I had the misfortune of meeting a pair of cops sitting at the end of the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn just handing out tickets to virtually every cyclist that came by during evening rush hour. Frankly, it was like something out of a Third World country.

That, however, seems to be the city that you want to live in, Johnny. Nevertheless, I've got news for you: There are only going to be more and more bikes filling your streets in the coming years. You can keep griping about it and calling for more enforcement (it'll probably earn you a spot on a Community Board). Or you can actually be constructive and help figure out how to accommodate the growing demand for biking in such a way that a healthy pedestrian environment is not sacrificed.