Driving in Davis

Everyday, I commute to Davis. And everyday, I almost kill a bicyclist.

The Davis emblem or whatever is a giant old-fashioned bike, and a few years back I went to this strange sister-city ceremony between Davis and some Japanese city that also valued biking above all else. In fact, the Japanese delegation said they were looking for a sister-city in America, so they googled “bike friendly city” and got Davis as their first result. They visited Davis, rented a few bikes and took a tour around town, and they found that yes, Davis is bike-friendly and therefore worthy of city-sisterhood. This story is somewhat pointless.

What I do want to say is that Davis is overrun by bikers and bikes to the point where it’s dangerous to drive. I’m almost positive that by the end of the quarter I will seriously injure someone by accident. Especially at night, I’ll be making turns without giving the necessary 360 degree check and I’ll almost kill some 90 pound asian girl zipping by on her flaming pink cruiser. And besides those close calls, I’ve heard at least one store from every bicyclist in Davis about how they had a “hella” bad wipeout, some involving third degree burns, asphalt stuck underneath skin, skidding across pavement, etc. Actually that was all from the same story, but really almost everyone has wiped out at least once, and most of the wipe-outs involved cars.

I’d also say that cars are generally not in vogue here at Davis, given the whole green revolution that holds captive this town. I got an email early in the year, asking me to take a campus-survey about driving habits. Usually I like to scrutinize the questions so I can find out where they’re going with the survey. But these questions were pretty directed. I remember, “do you pollute the environment by driving to school everyday?” I might be misremembering the wording, but that was the general vibe I got from most of the questions.

So really my daily goal is to drive into school without killing anyone, compete for a parking spot and then join the ranks of pedestrians who own the Davis roads. I can walk around without fear of being called “not-green” or whatever derogatory term a green person might use, and I won’t go to prison for killing a poor girl or boy on their bicycle. And Davis, being the small, green-belted city that it is, is walkable from relevant end to end in about ten minutes.

In short, driving in Davis sucks.

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