FAU campus is a racetrack for bicycles and skateboards, with pedestrians treated as mere hurdles.
I don’t know how many of you have been walking to class, minding your own business, when a bike comes whizzing by you at 15 miles an hour almost knocking you on your ass. But it’s happened to me a number of times. If it hasn’t happened to you, maybe it’s because you’re the one on the bike.
I used to love riding my bike. But when you have a campus that is overcrowded as it is, it poses a danger to those who still use their feet to get around.
There are people who live on campus, in the dorms and especially the Student Apartments, who have a long way to walk and prefer riding their bike. For those people, I offer two alternatives to make FAU safer.
Option 1: Walk! Or even run, make a game out of it, see how long it takes you to jog to class, and then try to beat it the next day. Option 2: Ride your bikes to the main parking garage and park them there. They have bike racks there for that very reason.
Other than those campus golf carts and wheelchairs, there should be no wheels on sidewalks. Just because your vehicle doesn’t have a motor or a license plate doesn’t make it an exception.
Then there’s the skateboarders. Skateboards aren’t as bad as bikes, mainly because they’re smaller and easier to avoid. Although without brakes, chances are if someone is about to crash into you while you’re walking, they are gonna eat it just as bad.
I think skateboarding is cool as hell, but why do you need to ride them to class? Skateboarding is fun, but it is nothing more than a hobby, a very cool hobby. Like fishing or bowling, it’s something one does on their free time. Funny, I don’t see anyone bringing their fishing rod or tackle box to class. Heck, I’d love to pogo stick my way around campus, but I don’t.
As for long boards, they’re a completely different species of skateboards. Intended only for “cruising,” long boards keep surfers occupied until they can get back in the ocean. They are all over the place. They’re worse than regular skateboards because they’re bigger and harder to control.
Quite often I’ll notice one of these long boarders cruising along the pedestrian walkways on campus, and their wheels will get wedged in the cracks. Their board will get stuck, as the law of kinetics continues to propel them forward.
Do you know why that happens? Because the walkways are not meant to have skateboards riding on them, that’s why they are called walk-ways – they’re for walking.
For all you boarders out there, I truly hope some day FAU will build you the board-walks that you so deserve.
As for the bikers, think about how much it would suck if you were walking down the street, minding your own business and someone came from behind and whacked you in the back with a 30 pound aluminum crow bar going at 15 miles per hour.
Well, that’s the danger you put us in every time you get behind the wheels. So be a little more careful and a lot more courteous.
