I was once rear-ended by a bicycle while sitting in a parked car on the side of a deserted country road. Heading up north for the weekend with the family, siblings squabbling like they always do when forced to share a backseat for hours on end, my dad finally did the unthinkable: he actually pulled the damn car over.

Five minutes into a passionate rant about why kids must behave in the car so as not to distract the driver and potentially cause a devastating wreck, my dad was interrupted by a loud thud that shook the 6,000 pound Suburban nearly off its axles.

Noticing the immediate astonishment on my dad’s strained face as he turned around from the driver’s seat for the lecture, I managed to whip around just in time to see the back tire of a bike flipping through the air.

When the entire family went outside to investigate, we found a mangled biker, crouched over her equally mangled bike with blood pouring from the gap in her mouth where only moments before teeth had resided. Two giant dents exactly a handlebar’s width apart adorned the rear door of the vehicle.

Of course we rushed her to the nearest emergency room in what remains today the single most uncomfortable car ride of my life.

Obviously I didn’t want to blame the victim, especially when she is sitting in the front seat trying in vain to finger busted teeth back into her mouth, but the utter vacuity of this biker was simply astonishing. Had she really just lived that juvenile “you’re so dumb you got hit by a parked car” joke?

It wasn’t like we were hidden behind a sharp corner or just beyond a steep hill. We were on the shoulder of a vacant highway in the heart of farm country. The road was flat and straight all the way to the horizon in both directions. Not to mention, we were in a car the size of a small barn. Unfortunately she wasn’t aimed at the broad side.

I lost a lot of respect for bikers that day. Despite my own two-wheeled forays for both exercise and transportation, I have never understood what it is about bikers that seem to make them utterly clueless to the world around them. It really makes no sense. It definitely wasn’t the family car that got the worst of the collision on that country road.

Despite their obvious vulnerability, bikers everywhere, including in downtown Madison, refuse to abide by the rules of the road, and often tear through the streets and sidewalks as if they were in some post-apocalyptic world where flesh hungry zombies are the only other beings on the streets.

This is why I fully support the University of Wisconsin Police Department’s decision earlier this week to crack down on renegade bikers. In a town where thousands of students share the sidewalks and roads like herds of cattle being ushered to academic slaughter, bikers who refuse to use designated lanes, stay off sidewalks, use hand turn signals or stop at busy intersections are a pesky nuisance and a potentially dangerous hazard. Until they learn to safely share the road and abide by the laws meant to protect themselves and others, I fully support UWPD’s effort to clamp down.

However, there is one group whose plight I fully recognize in all this.

I’m looking at you, hipsters. It’s not easy trying as hard as you do to be cool, and it’s obviously impossible to be as cool as you aspire to be without a trendy fixie. You are certainly going to be the ones who feel this crackdown the most, but at least you’ll do it before the rest of us get into it.

It’s tough to get that fixed-gear bike moving from a dead stop, and even harder to get it there in the first place without any brakes. Obviously having a bike with brakes and more than one gear like a normal person is far too mainstream, but it appears you’re just going to have to suffer in one respect or another.

With UWPD riding full force against you in the coming weeks, it looks like you might just have to deal with the impracticality of your super cool bike, find a new one or risk being cranked by the hard shaft of the law.

Despite this oppressive inconvenience for Madison’s ‘connoisseurs of cool,’ UWPD is right on the mark with this one. Learn the rules, stay off the sidewalk and maybe even think about protecting those thick skulls with a helmet.

Kyle Mianulli ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism, philosophy and political science.