"Saying you can't buy certain things is very different than literally diving into your body to inject things into it or terminate a pregnancy. You're not allowed to buy plutonium either, because of the collective. No one complains about that."
- Charlie O'Donnell
"Clearly you don't understand how healthcare works. Sick people are paid for by healthy people. The total cost of my healthcare, if I had paid out of pocket, in the last 5 years, is almost nothing. I haven't been sick... I just get a checkup once a year for good measure. Someone who has a triple bypass, however, costs over $60,000... but if you have healthcare coverage, you don't pay that. The healthy people pay that through their premiums. I'm unlikely, as a healthy eater, runner, and cyclist, to ever have a triple bypass... so I have to pay for the overweight people's healthcare costs. Your premiums and deductibles are NOWHERE near the actual cost of being sick. If you never get sick, then you too, are getting screwed over by everyone guzzling a big soda and chomping down a big mac a day. I'm not the enemy..."
- Charlie O'Donnell
"I'm not advocating mowing down pedestrians... just approaching clear intersections with caution, but going through if the coast is clear. If you cross against the light, you could cause an accident... maybe you don't see a car and they swerve. Jaywalkers cause bike accidents all the time--they just dart out from between cars or trucks without looking. It's not pedestrians or bikes that are the problem, per-se... it's 1) people that aren't aware and paying attention, whether they are on foot or on wheels and 2) a set of rules that was built to favor cars and cars only."
- Charlie O'Donnell
"I actually own a car, but I'll never complain about it being too difficult to have one here. Realistically, very few people who own cars in NYC really, really need one."
- Charlie O'Donnell
"That's true... I've never come anywhere close to pedestrians except there they cross against the light. The worst is at Astor Place by the cube... They don't even seem to see the light."
- Charlie O'Donnell
"Dean "Cross at the corner" Collins--the one man in NYC who never jaywalks. The fact is, roads were not designed for bikes, but that's changing. We have our own traffic signals in certain places now, and undoubtedly the laws will change. You jaywalk because you are clear that you can do it safely, in the name of your own personal convenience, despite the law. It's the same reason you drive at 75 on a highway vs 65.... unless you only drive 65 on a highway as well. Then, you sir, are just a better man than I."
- Charlie O'Donnell
"If there's no one coming, riders should be able to do the same thing as pedestrians--are are you telling me you stop at crosswalks in the Heights at night? The riding the wrong way thing annoys me, too."
- Charlie O'Donnell