Did I miss a trend in US Weekly? I have seen a dozen drivers with dogs in their laps on my commute during the past few weeks. This morning I passed a woman at a stop sign with a terrier pressing its face against the driver side window. She was of course on the phone at the time. These aren’t toy dogs I’m seeing, either; these are pretty decent-looking small breeds. One of the drivers actually had a standard poodle with its head out the window. It must have been half on the passenger seat. 

This is the kind of thing I think about whenever I hear someone say “well, until cyclists start following the rules of the road…” Which do you think is safer: a cyclist on a 40-pound bike treating a stop sign as a yield? Or a driver in a 3000-pound truck, on the phone, with a 20-pound animal in her lap?