It's obvious you kind of think I'm right, by your use of the term "guilt" regarding your use of a car, and the use of "good" regarding riding a bike often. Not everyone is me, that's painfully obvious... but you and I agree at least. The guilt you indicate represents that which is highest and best within you - the desire to protect & preserve human life. Stop fighting it, which includes trying to turn it outward and blame me, the messenger. The conflict you feel when you get behind the wheel is that you might do this very thing to someone else. I recommend avoiding it, simple as that. If you can't or won't do that, that's for you to work out, not me.

Is it safe for me to assume you were injured by someone who chose to drive a car, and not merely by your riding of the bike? I mean the latter does happen (more so in a recreation context than basic transportation I would venture). But the point is, you have the right to choose to ride a bike and the right to do it without undue risk of injury from someone else's infringement on your safety. Particularly if their reasons for doing so consist of nothing more than the typical list of trivial reasons I tend to hear that go into a decision to drive a car to get somewhere. Some of these, especially from people who are curious about other ways, tend to center around apprehension and doubt about problems that have been solved many times over. (But in an hour of network TV you'll see probably 20 commercials for cars, and none for, let's say, waterproof garment bags with hooks on them for transporting business suits wrinkle-free on a bike's rack.)

The one major, non-trivial reason to use a car of course, is the deeply ironic fact that on the bike, you might get killed or injured by other people who decided to use the car instead. Or never even consciously thought about it at all, and just went along because of conformity and marketing. Well it's okay, I'm sure wherever they were headed was real important. They "had to" drive. And life is risk, after all... with most of the risk being shouldered by the cyclist, not them. Anyway no humorless PC vegan transgendered (throw that in there) caricature is gonna jam their standards down that person's brave and stalwart individualistic throat, that's for sure.

No wait it was ram. Sorry, I've seen that one many times, so it's not very memorable. To me it's usually cause for optimism, since it means the person has moved past the initial death threats and namecalling and moved into fantasizing to avoid confronting their own doubts about the real issue. To that effort: How likely is it really, that driving your car means you're a brave comic-book hero crusader fighting for individual freedom against a tyrannical horde of standards-rammers? (A horde that even in a place like Portland OR is something like 5% of the population, tops.) You don't think maybe driving cars, like 95% of people and every TV commercial tells you to, at great personal expense, isn't conforming meekly to a standard set by others?

My decision to ride a bike has more to do with habit (25 years like I said) and not really giving a shit if I get killed, which is a peculiar species of bravery that I know most people don't share. So I don't call it a standard for people to live up to. It's actually a result of surviving trauma, which I have in common with this woman who killed the boy. Most people, who've done no such thing, tend to be more like "Oh God what about my precious, precious life!" Well what about it? You deserve a non-deadly street then, if it's so precious.