Citizen-Times treatment of bicyclists’ rights damaging

Editors, Asheville Global Report,

I would like to respond in your paper to the Apr. 7 lead article in the “Out There” column of the Asheville Citizen-Times that featured a Leicester man who drives around in his truck with a “Pave Bicyclists” bumper sticker. I am skeptical that the Citizen-Times will run my letter of complaint.

I would like to know why this bizarre and discomforting article was written and published. It was incoherent and illogical; it was provocative but only in a unnecessarily confrontational way — a journalistic equivalent to spitting on someone and then saying “I just had to do that.”

This article did nothing to instruct the Citizen-Times readers about the bicycling rights the author presumably (and wholly inaccurately) regarded as a “nuisance,” and it certainly did not attempt to depict Roy Thomas’ anti-bicycling sentiments in a responsible and thorough manner. If this piece was deliberately flippant, the tone was inconsistent with and actually cheapened the value of the rest of the “Out There” articles that were listed below it: an article about an Avery County Sheriff’s deputy recovering from serious gunshot wounds; an account of Asheville-based actress Andie McDowell’s latest TV efforts; an article about Red Cross warnings against war-related hoaxes and scams; an article about the clash over medical malpractice judgment limits that is taking place in Raleigh. Again, I ask: Why did the Citizen-Times present this piece?

Did they just want to remind cyclists that they are shoveling sand against the tide, because people like Roy Thomas are “out there” waiting for them, unless cyclists demand special rights to protect themselves — rights that the Citizen-Times writer and Thomas have disregarded as “nuisances?” Did you think that cyclists don’t already know that there are severely deranged individuals “out there” who use their vehicles to act out their frustrations and aggressive fantasies? Do you want to encourage these drivers at the expense of cyclists?

Think how much more compelling this article would have been had the writer made a 15-minute journey to the NC AOC public access terminal located in the Buncombe County courthouse, and discovered that there appears to be a ROY DALTON THOMAS, living at a Leicester, NC address, who has two prior convictions for improper passing (85 CR 6710; 86 CR 8837) and was charged with speeding 88 mph in a 55 zone (this latter charge in re: 89 CR 17366, was reduced to 70 in a 55, and THOMAS paid $240 in costs and restitution)? So as both an avid reader and cyclist, I am left with wondering who is the bigger nuisance: The “Pave Bicyclists” crowd or the Asheville Citizen-Times?

Brian Lee Knopp

Burnsville, North Carolina

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