Discussions about bikes vs. cars eventually devolve into bitter shouting matches, so let's just skip the preliminaries and get right to the clichéd accusations, OK?

Bikers are insufferable self-righteous narcissists who feel virtuous because they are helping the earth and are thus entitled to treat STOP signs with the same careful respect Vladimir Putin pays to Ukrainian borders. But they also expect cars to treat them like a nun with a walker carrying a Fabergé egg.

Car drivers are wasteful planet-killers who regard their plastic guzzle-box as an extension of their ego, and the only time they're happier than watching YouTube videos of bikers getting doored and cartwheeling in the air like scarecrows shot from a cannon is when they're idling in a McDonald's drive-through lane alone in their 12-passenger car.

There. Everyone happy now? Let us all calm down and discuss the matter calmly and reach a sensible concord for the benefit of all. We have much in common. For example, motorcycles? Those guys who laid down on the bike in a posture usually associated with a colonoscopy, revving their engines and darting around in traffic? Both bikers and drivers hate them. See, we can agree. Let's build on that.

OK. So. The other day I was driving down a one-way, and lo, I saw a bike in the middle of the street. Going the wrong way. He was on one of those recumbent bikes — you know, the ones that make you look like you couldn't decide whether to ride a bike or go down a water slide.

I like the idea of recumbent bikes, since you're sitting down and leaning back, a posture I associate with having a remote in one hand and a cool beverage in the other. Alas, I know I would look dorky, and from observation it seems you also have to grow a white beard, and perhaps have some quirky health routine. No sir, don't eat anything except a nutritious mush of pineberries and quail livers. Look at me! Sixty-five and shins like bowling pins.

At least they're not unicycles, which are a sensible mode of transportation if your job requires you to follow clowns and precede elephants. I suppose they're different, but so is getting to work by repeatedly pole-vaulting. Surely the recumbent unicycle is next, for those who think ordinary unicycles are too mainstream.

Anyway. The bike was going the wrong way, so I stopped. He waved, the universal signal for "sorry/thanks," the small gesture of goodwill that absolves all. I think I know why he was going the wrong way — the bike path nearby had a fork that took it around the creek, and if you missed the turn you were stuck. Hey, it happens. We've all found ourselves going the wrong way at some point. But here's the question:

If a cop car had been nearby, should he have gotten a ticket?

If you're in a car going the wrong way and you pass a black-and-white, well, whoop whoop and the festive lights. You have some explaining to do. I suspect a bike would get a pass — and if you doubt that, consider the recent micro-debate about junking the speed limits for bikes.

The Minneapolis City Council decided not to lift the 10 mile per hour limit. Apparently there was a fear that bison-thighed bikers would blast along the paths at Mach 2. The speed limit will remain in place, and there is general agreement it will not be enforced.

But it's still the law.

Just not one of those that anyone cares about, and one that everybody feels free to break. Illegal but A-okay.

How many other laws do we have that fit the model? Statutes that exist to send a Message, set a Standard, but that aren't applied because the police have better things to do. Like cars with LOUD MUSIC that liquefy your innards as they idle next to you, or graffiti?

If you think I'm saying bike speeding is like loud music and graffiti, you may pick up your Obtuseness Certification at the end of the class. Of course I'm not.

But it's not healthy to have laws that sit on the books because they're handy to have around in case the authorities might need one. Say, that fellow seemed to be lurking, let's talk to him. Sorry, partner, lurking laws were repealed. Dang. Did he spit? Spitting laws were repealed. Well, he was leaving the parking lot on a bike at a high rate of speed. That'll work.

Of course many bikers go faster than 10 mph. Some probably have sore faces because they've been rippling with the G-forces you get when you hit 12. I had a Schwinn with a speedometer, and I think it went up to 30, in case you wanted to tie your handlebars to a Mustang bumper. You delighted in pushing that needle as far to the right as you could, and perhaps it's a memory of heedless childhood anarchy that makes me side with the bikers here. Drive as fast you can. As the cyclist saying goes: Summer is short and so are your pants. Enjoy.

Just don't tell me you have the right to blow through STOP signs because of Magical Bike Logic. You can say you want to be treated like any other vehicle on the road, but you know you get treated differently. And you like it.

Sorry, sorry! Loud motorcycles, remember them? How we came together and hated them?

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858