Skateboarders want to ride

In “Skateboarders should not be in traffic” (Daily Mail, June 24) it says, “I was driving down Main Street in Frisco on Saturday morning and there was a skateboarder on the street who was zigzagging in front of me. This is dangerous ...”

Dangerous for who, the skateboarder or the motorist? At the same time I was having coffee in front of Coffee Roasters and observed the occasional skateboarder’s use of the street.

Nothing unusual was taking place as vacationers and locals intermixed in an atmosphere of recreational freedom. There was more chance of a dangerous incident from a car backing out of the diagonal parking or not stopping for a designated pedestrian crossing. So what is the beef? It’s not so much skateboarders not fitting into the traffic scene as it is a clash of cultures: comfort, convenience, and status quo versus alternative lifestyles of the young and non-conventional.

We know motor vehicles will be involved in over 40,000 deaths this year. We also know that bicycles will contribute to the accident toll as well. Still, motor vehicles are here to stay and so are bikes if for no other reason than economics.

A hundred years ago there wasn’t enough room for automobiles and horse and buggies to exist or RVs with bikes, cars in tow, ATVs and boats attached and motorcycles? If Frisco and Summit County is to be a place where only the status quo has the right of way in traffic or in making law, it’s only a matter of time before skateboarding in traffic will become a crime. Oh, I forgot, it already is! So enforce it or change it. Isn’t that was the skateboarders’ protest was all about? But don’t forget what enforcement over freedom to ride means. Five years ago in Summit County there was a kid skateboarding who was hit by a police car. Two hours later, after handcuffing the kid with a broken arm from the crash and sitting him cross-legged on the street while the Highway Patrol was called in to decide the crime, the kid was released without being cited. In the follow up report the officer wrote he thought it was an elk! Is this what we have to look forward to as skateboarders are looked upon in traffic as criminals? Think about it.