Some people hate bicyclists so much they actually want to hurt us. We’ve heard that someone spread hundreds of tacks in the bike lanes on Brookline Street in Cambridge last week, in the short stretch between the BU Bridge rotary and Henry Street/Waverly Street. A Good Samaritan bicyclist picked up as many tacks as he could find and reported the incident to the police. (Unfortunately for him, he discovered the tacks by getting a flat.) Obviously, this is an insanely dangerous and illegal thing for some bike-hater to do. Everyone keep your eyes open for this sort of thing, and make sure to report any incidents to the local police and to MassBike. If anyone saw anything related to this specific incident, contact Sgt. Kathy Murphy at the Cambridge Police.
i’m speechless
I’m used to mouth-breathing Neanderthals yelling threats (before driving away quickly) but spreading tacks on a bike lane is a sneaky and cowardly new low. I hope nobody gets hurt.
Could have been an accident — seems a little ridiculous to me to assume this is malicious. Maybe someone just lost their box of tacks.
Really? Lost their box of tacks? Come on.
I agree with Chris–though there is no doubt tension between cyclist and motorists, jumping to the conclusion that this was done on purpose w/o any evidence is actually kind of irresponsible. Now, if this keeps happening repeatedly (especially in the same location), then there’s a bit more reason to believe this incident was premeditated.
Lately I’ve seen an unusually large amount of broken glass in bike lanes in Somerville especially Davis Square. When I say unusally large I mean like someone took the time to smash 20 bottles in one evening.
My experience with commuting in Cambridge is high schoolers packed into a car (more people than seats and seatbelts) trying to scare bikers either myself or others further ahead in the bike lane by rolling down the windows and screaming at them as the car passes and I’ve even been hit by trash thrown by these teenagers such as sodas.
With tv shows that glorify people getting hurt on MTV and other channels, they think its funny to watch people’s misfortune. I remember when I was a kid there was a huge nationwide outbreak of kids driving around and shooting cyclists and pedestrians with paintball guns.