Editor, The Beacon:
Living in New Albany, Indiana, and Louisville, Kentucky, we were avid bicyclists. We rode 3,000-5,000 miles a year. For seven years, we spent two weeks in our birth state of Iowa.
We would park our car at the Mississippi River on Iowa’s east side, ride to the Missouri River on the west side, and then ride back with our 10,000 best friends on RAGBRAI, an annual bike ride across Iowa.
Being fair-weather riders, we rode only six to eight months up North. Our bikes hung in the garage during those cold snowy months. Retiring to Florida, we looked forward to riding the year around.
But since moving to DeLand, we don’t bike at all. At first, we had a lot to do and didn’t know the roads. As we got to know the roads, they looked very biker-unfriendly. Even in the city, adults were riding their bikes on sidewalks. That was weird. It was illegal everywhere else we had lived.
A small article in a recent Beacon explained what is going on. A recent report from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found Volusia is the seventh-most-deadly county for cyclists in the entire U.S.; 14 of the 20 most-deadly counties are in Florida. Drivers are more dangerous than gators.
Sam Sloss
DeLand
Deadly is no exaggeration. There are no leaders in Volusia County. There are parasites that suck the benefits of the public teat to indulge themselves. Use their position of power for profit, self-aggrandizement, currying people with bigger paychecks to get in their good graces. The corruption, the complacency and the ignorance that permeates the chambers of the council are foul, nauseating, and (in my mind) criminal.