I Blocked a Bike Lane, So What Analysis Example

To this day, everyone wants to be safe outside on the roads, whether you are driving, walking, running, or even riding your bike. However, recently, drivers have been causing many violations in the road that impacts primarily cyclists. Similarly, Eben Weiss, a blogger and author from New York City responds to the audience on the opinion piece "I Blocked a Bike Lane, So What?" by Claudia Burke to argue that cyclists are not the responsible ones for making roads dangerous. In Claudia Burkes’s opinion piece from The Washington Post, she argues the exact opposite of Weiss where she believes cyclists are, in fact, the main problem of the road. Ultimately, Weiss will project in his opinion piece, “Drivers Should Be Held to a Higher Standard “ why Claudia Burke is in the wrong by using claims, strategies, and assumptions to fulfill his argument. 

To begin with, Weiss claims that a driver is not truly aware of the safety of driving and what potential harm they can cause. This supports the argument because it indicates that drivers as a whole are ignorant and believe they own the roads. To support this claim, Weiss says in paragraph 3, "signs may seem like arbitrary rules placed there merely to annoy and inconvenience you, but the fact is you’re driving a ton or more of heavy machinery around a crowded city, not playing a game of Sorry!". This evidence supports the claim because most of the time drivers drive recklessly and ignore signs in a crowded city with pedestrians and cyclists all around. Drivers can hit them and still claim that they aren’t the ones making roads dangerous. To support Weiss' claim and overall argument, he uses the strategy of anecdote. He uses an anecdote in paragraph 5 by telling us a short story of how annoying it is for bikers to wait for a car to be in the zone that is most specifically for bikes only: the bike lane. This matters because the annoyingness that drivers feel about another car being super slow is the same feeling bikers feel when a car is being super slow in their only designated zone when cars have multiple lanes to be in.

In this first claim and strategy, Weiss is writing about drivers who violate the road by parking on the bike lane. Since he begins the 5th paragraph by saying "Drivers:" it grabs the attention of all drivers but primarily the ones who do the violations Weiss explains throughout the previous two paragraphs. However, Weiss assumes that all drivers do these violations on purpose when most of the time people have no choice but to be in the bike lane whether there is or isn’t a sign that says “No Parking”. For example, like going to pick up your child from school. There are so many other cars wanting to pick up their kids and drivers have no other choice than to park in the bike lane. They need to make sure they get safely to their kids and not have them walk blocks and blocks to their parent’s car. 

Weiss continues his argument that cyclists are not the ones responsible for having dangerous roads by claiming that the ones who encourage drivers to disobey the rules are, in fact, motorists. This claim supports the argument because motorists have a big ego when out on the road and violate the rules of the road in which drivers then follow. To support this claim, Weiss says in paragraph 7, "people sometimes accuse cyclists of being “entitled,” but there is no road user more entitled than the motorist, and there is no motorist more entitled than one who’s running late for child pickup or drop-off. When the precious offspring is in transit, regular driver selfishness gives way to solipsism, and everyone else must assume just a little more risk to accommodate them." This evidence supports his claim because for every other more motorist that violates the rules, there will be another violating driver and will lead to drivers having a bigger ego on the road, therefore, they become more dangerous. To further support Weiss' claim and overall argument, he uses the strategy of asyndeton in order to explain how drivers are very ignorant and don't care about the safety of others. Weiss goes on in paragraph 10 by saying that it is "not a big deal" when a driver does "something unsafe quickly enough" like for example, "Pulling into the bike lane, flipping a quick U-turn, running the light just after it’s changed…no harm, no foul, right?". This matters because the list of all the harms they have caused makes them look very bad and it is as if they don't care that they do these violations one too many times. 

In this second claim and strategy, the intended audience is experienced, violating motorists and drivers with high egos on the road. Throughout these few paragraphs, Weiss’s goal was to bash motorists and drivers as he mentions them repeatedly and calls them “entitled” and calling them “precious” signifying that they are the “kings of the road”. However, an assumption Weiss does is that he generalizes that all motorists are bad and have high egos but it is just the fact that motorists have very few unique differences of rules in the road than cars, like being able to be in between lanes. 

In conclusion, Eben Weiss responded to Claudia Burkes Washington Post’s opinion piece in his own opinion piece “Drivers Should Be Held to a Higher Standard” in order to prove her wrong about cyclists being the responsible ones for having dangerous roads. Weiss does this by claiming that a driver is not truly aware of the safety of driving and what potential harm they can cause and that the ones who encourage drivers to disobey the rules are, in fact, motorists. To fulfill these claims Weiss uses the strategies of anecdote and asyndeton to thoroughly prove himself right. Nevertheless, the roads have become more reckless to be in and it is mostly because of the incompetence and ignorance that drivers have on the road. The only way to fix this is by having more regulations and laws that don’t necessarily benefit the driver but mostly the cyclists.