The bike lanes slow those cars down, which keeps fatal crashes from occurring.

Could you picture yourself driving your car and hitting a person? One time, my wife and I crossed Franklin Ave East to get to Seward Coop; an SUV turning left out of the coop’s parking lot accelerated towards us without looking. We got out of the way in time, and I caught the eye of the driver as she finally saw us barely miss the blow from her bumper. She was terrified.

It reminded me of the time I saw a bicyclist get hit and splayed out on a sedan’s windshield at Washington Ave and 2nd Street South in Downtown. I caught that driver’s look as his windshield collapsed onto him, then talked to him afterwards while waiting for the ambulance; he was terrified too. I’d care to guess that all of us would be terrified to find our car running into somebody on the street, and that we’d accept mechanisms that protect drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists from that fate.

So why do people feel so mad about these bike lanes? According to transportation expert David Levinson, who studied Twin Cities transportation for two decades at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Transportation Studies, the reason is likely because motorists feel that they’ve lost something of value.

“There is always contention for road space, which is a scarce resource allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis with arbitrary rules,” writes Levinson, which would may explain a recent contention that 26th and 28th Streets’ bike lanes are “NAZI lanes”. Moreover, “losses are more deeply felt than gains,” Levinson continues, citing a behavioral-economic principle known as Prospect Theory, “and taking away a lane for cars or their storage is felt as a loss.”

I’d care to argue that there’s a trade-off in value in the case of 26th and 28th Streets’ bike lanes, even as I accept that motorists genuinely feel the pain of losing a lane: motorists lose a few miles per hour, which is gained in the form of safety for people that, especially in Phillips, have dark skin and insufficient means to live away from busy streets.

Cars are dangerous. Separating bikes from cars and limiting the space in which cars can operate makes the cars slow down.

Do you want justice? Equity? Fewer people of color dead in the street?

Making cars slow down in neighborhoods where they live is institutional justice and equity for black and brown people.