An open-air bar in Houston posted a message on its marquee about bicycling accidents that has drawn criticism from the city’s cycling community. The message posted by the bar, Truck Yard, looks like it was intended as a joke, but it was not well-received in light of the incident in Waller County where a teenager ran over six cyclists while rolling coal.
Truck Yard’s marquee sign displayed the following message:
Study shows 90% of bike accidents can be avoided by buying a car like normal people
The marquee was then photographed and displayed on the bar’s social media channels, as part of a running theme of jokes featured under #truckyardsign:
The local cycling community brought attention to the bar’s marquee message shortly after it was posted, according to a report from Eater Houston. The report notes that Truck Yard is located just blocks away from one of the city’s most popular bike paths, the Columbia Tap trail.
Eater cited the executive director of Bike Houston, Joe Cutrufo, who’s weighed in on the Waller County case before. Cutrufo pointed out in a tweet that bicyclists are more likely to patronize local businesses such as the Truck Yard bar.
The bar’s proximity to a busy bike path and the recent incident in Waller County could have been good reasons (among many others) to refrain from making the “joke,” but Truck Yard went ahead anyway, and then proceeded to display its marquee sign on the internet — which is both public and subject to significantly more criticism.
The negative backlash from the cycling groups was enough to prompt the business to limit social media users’ ability to engage with the bar online, per Eater, and Truck Yard issued the apology pictured below on Monday:
The “joke” message has since been taken down and replaced, and pictures of Sunday’s marquee have been scrubbed from the bar’s social media channels.