. . .The Tour de France seems to have spawned the Tour de South Hills — if you'll pardon my French.

Are your secondary arteries clogged by clumps of Lance Armstrong-esque bicyclists sporting aerodynamic helmets, colorful skintight synthetics and baseball-size calf muscles?

Classically, rhetoricians began their arguments with a narrative as a means of establishing a shared experience or bond with the audience.

(Hyperbole)

An attempt at a "clever" lead in. The article appeared in the July 23, 2002 edition of the Tribune Review, and Vasillaros was clearly playing off of Lance Armstrong's 4th win as an introduction.

Rhetorically, the opening also serves to identify the problem as both widespread and recent.

It is important to note the phrase "you are forced to drive slower than the slowest one." Many anti-cyclists identify the inconvenience of being held up by a cyclist as cause enough to ban bikes from the road. The ideology surrounding the automobile tends to encourage the illusion of freedom, and any impediment is thus cast as a check on personal liberty.

The appeal to common sense is frequently employed in lieu of factual evidence (after all, "common sense" implies a wisdom that transcends evidence). It also frequently supports the needs of those who occupy dominant positions in a social group, in this case, motorists.

Segregationists once used the concept of common sense to justify the strictly mandated separation of races or sexes, and Vasillaros maintains this tradition in this passage.

His lack of historical knowledge also reveals itself, as bicycles occupied the roads long before the widespread advent of the car, (as did wagons, horses and pedestrians). His claim that roads were designed for motorized vehicles may apply to interstates, but not to the vast majority of public roads.

Of course, his argument relies on the audience's perception that cycling is a recent phenomenon, and that tolerating cyclists will open the sluiceway to a flood of non-mechanized interlopers.

What I find most disturbing about his line of argumentation is its pervasive selfishness. The concept of privilege depending on payment is, from my perspective, antithetical to a democratic society. Public roads belong to the people, and this includes those who cannot, or chose not, to own an automobile.

If the government is so concerned about highway safety — seat belt this, air bag that and crash test after crash test — why does it allow bicycles anywhere near traffic? Can you name another vehicle on our streets that has no safety features? Does the government care about safety or not?

His repeated us of the imperatives "makes" and "forces" strongly hints at a contempt for government safety regulations. This is a common sentiment among anti-cycling ideologues, and it strongly implicates the irony of their arguments. There is a strong distrust of government intervention in the form of airbags, environmental regulations and seat belts, yet Vasillaros calls for government intervention to rid the roads of the 2 wheeled Mongols.

He does have a point: if the government truly cared about public safety, it would hold light trucks to the same safety and environmental regulations currently required for cars, it would institute a graduated tax based both on a vehicle's fuel consumption and the social cost in damages. New regulations would force us to accept that a vehicle's safety should be measured by the threat that vehicle poses to others on the road, as well as the protection it gives to its passengers. Until it does, the government will continue to perpetuate a flagrant double standard that fail to hold certain drivers to the same standard of law.

Finally, the government should look at safety with regard to bicycles. If we define safety as the idea of protecting society, we should get MORE people out onto bicycles. Given the fact that obesity will soon outstrip cigarette smoking as the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, and that overuse of the automobile is a contributing factor in promoting overweight, alternative forms of transportation, particularly those that encourage physical activity, should be emphasized.

When those spoke-thin road hogs start paying their fair share of road costs — like motorized vehicles do — then maybe we could consider allowing them on a few isolated roads like in our city, county and state parks, where the only drivers they could threaten would be the teenagers whose parents are teaching them to drive.

The politically correct crowd loves bicycles. They don't use fossil fuels They don't pollute. And the more people can be convinced to ride them instead of cars, the more people will want to move back into the city so their ride Downtown and back would be doable. I have even seen bike racks on PAT buses.

Bicycling is a practical way to commute, if you live in Beijing. Cars are a luxury there, but they are a necessity here. Safety should be a necessity, too.

Sweeping generalization

In this instance, Vasillaros accuses cyclists of dominating the road and posing a physical threat to drivers.

Perhaps Vasillaros is aware of the argument's tenuous nature, for he resorts to linking cyclists to an undefined "politically correct crowd," the perennial bogeyman of so many conservative commentators. We're left to interpret the meaning of political correctness, but the implication in this instance is quite clear: cyclists pose an ideological threat to U.S. drivers. This is a battle of the culture wars, and if cyclists win, you lose your vehicle.

Perhaps he is referring to Critical Mass riders, but this is unclear. It is safe to say that the vast majority of cyclist own cars themselves and, unlike anti-bike columnists, embrace virtually the full range of the political spectrum. One might hope that in the future, aspiring writers seeking to express anti-bicycle sentiments might actually resort to employing facts and well reasoned argumentation, rather than resorting to shallow appeals to public selfishness and ignorance.