CafePress Crosses the Line on Cycling Products

What on earth would possess someone to promote and sell promotional materials that makes light of – even legitimizes – hitting and verbally abusing cyclists? Ask the folks at CafePress, because I’m not sure I can answer that for them. They are an on-line store that has loads of other products that are clever, humorous, ironic, pointed, self-deprecating, off-the-wall.

And then they have artwork that shows a cyclist getting hit by a motorist, with an accompanying explicit epithet that anyone that’s ridden a bike in the last 24 hours will likely have heard, along the lines of “excuse me, but I think you are in my way.” They have it for bumper stickers, mugs, T-shirts.

I wonder if they also have klever klan merchandise encouraging folks to break race laws. Perhaps snappy graphics showing people being persecuted for their sexual orientation or religious beliefs of other lifestyle choices. Is there a line in humorous “I support torture” stickers that flout international law as well as domestic laws and good taste?

So why would they think it is OK to glorify violence against cyclists? Free speech – to promote behavior that kills and injures people every single day of the year already? We’ll be waiting to hear from them.

And thanks to Dean Schott at the League of Illinois Bicyclists for calling out this awful example of anti-cyclist nonsense. State and local advocacy groups are the eyes and ears of the cycling movement – yesterday it was a radio station in Baltimore, tomorrow it could be someone in your neck of the woods going off on cyclists. Make sure you are a member of your state and local advocacy groups as well as the League. We need to stand up to this crap.