Why can't we all get along?
Recent rumblings here and there have had me thinking over the extreme difficulty Americans have in sharing the road. I am a cyclist: also a motorist and a pedestrian when the occasion demands, and we'll come back to that. Twice a week, when I work an afternoon shift, I've been riding to work, about a nine-mile round trip, half of it on busy streets. Thursday was typical: no assaults or catcalls from motor vehicles, which in all honesty was more common when I started this, over 30 years ago, than it is now. However, three, that's three, jaywalking pedestrians walked in front of me in the space of a few blocks, all less than 50 feet away. Being especially careful to avoid pedestrians, I stopped for all three; not one showed any sign of registering my existence. I'm rather slower than I was in my salad days, which makes avoidance easier.
I believe I once before quoted bicycle activist Richard Ballantine on this subject. He advocated very defensive cycling, based on two assumptions. First, to most people you are quite literally invisible. Second, to those who do see you, bicycle=nine-year-old kid= five mph=no threat. Despite repeated experiences to the contrary, both observations hold true today. Even at my advanced age and relatively low speed, I represent a gross vehicle weight of over 200 pounds travelling about 175 feet in ten seconds. That means if you dart out 50 feet in front on me, I'll be on you in under three seconds. If I am alert, it will take nearly half that time to stop a bicycle going only 12 mph with four brake shoes smaller than a baby's little finger. If I am even slightly inattentive, that impact will happen and it will hurt, because I will hit you with a force close to 1000 foot/pounds. And you will blame me. If you are in a vehicle and do the same thing, the physics are the same, but I will sustain most of the damage, and you will still blame me.
The cycle of ignorance wouldn't annoy bikers so much if it were not they who are almost always at the end of the circle of blame. I have seldom met a pedestrian dedicated to carrying on a lifelong vendetta against motorists, or vice versa. Yet one can hardly bring up this subject without turning up both pedestrians and motorists who stoke and nurse lifelong hostility toward cyclists. Dig a little and one finds, often, that this rage stems from one incident some variable time ago. Pedestrians, yes, do have something to fear from collisions with cyclists, collisions both can usually avoid by purging their minds of half-century-old delusions. Hostile motorists, on the other hand, may want to consider anger management as well as education, since what they drive meets the legal standard of a deadly weapon. The number of drivers hostile to bicycles has been slowly shrinking over the last 30 years, at least in my experience, but the ones who remain seem dedicated to making up the difference with aggressiveness and noise.
The circle of pedestrian blaming cyclist, cyclist blaming pedestrian, motorist blaming cyclist, etc., ad nauseam, resembles nothing so much as Thomas Nast's noted 19th century cartoon of the Tweed Ring, with everyone pointing the finger of blame at their neighbour:
In fact, everyone should be pointing that finger at themselves.
Speaking objectively, what makes a certain portion of motorists so enraged at cyclists? Probably one part is an unwillingness to share the road: note that motorcyclists report similar experiences. It's a commonplace among them that noisy pipes are a defence mechanism: the loud exhausts make the presence of a motorcycle patently obvious. The pipes plus the leathers plus the reputation make motorcyclists too intimidating for all but the most psychotic of drivers to cross. This does not work for bicyclists.
Further, all drivers are sometimes pedestrians, and most pedestrians are sometimes drivers. Despite the trouble both have in respecting the other's space, neither can claim ignorance of the other's experience.
A much smaller proportion of the population are adult cyclists. Thus we have ignorance of rights and of physics; thus we have invisibility, and thus we have a eagerness to shift blame onto the piece of the equation most people do not understand.
No one around here should put on airs and compare themselves favourably with other road users. In global public opinion, everyone occupying Greater Boston streets is almost as hostile and homicidal as Boston drivers, whose hostility is legendary the world over. The average performance of Boston cyclists can only rise above the norm if all cyclists originated in another dimension. At times, everyone concerned seems to think this is true.
If I weren't writing this, I'd already have forgotten those pedestrians (and the wrong-way bikers who complicated my life a couple of days before). Even writing about them, I'll forget the incidents I've mentioned in a fortnight. Why then is it necessary to nurse these grudges against cyclists for months, for years, for a lifetime? Does life offer nothing better?
I believe I once before quoted bicycle activist Richard Ballantine on this subject. He advocated very defensive cycling, based on two assumptions. First, to most people you are quite literally invisible. Second, to those who do see you, bicycle=nine-year-old kid= five mph=no threat. Despite repeated experiences to the contrary, both observations hold true today. Even at my advanced age and relatively low speed, I represent a gross vehicle weight of over 200 pounds travelling about 175 feet in ten seconds. That means if you dart out 50 feet in front on me, I'll be on you in under three seconds. If I am alert, it will take nearly half that time to stop a bicycle going only 12 mph with four brake shoes smaller than a baby's little finger. If I am even slightly inattentive, that impact will happen and it will hurt, because I will hit you with a force close to 1000 foot/pounds. And you will blame me. If you are in a vehicle and do the same thing, the physics are the same, but I will sustain most of the damage, and you will still blame me.
The cycle of ignorance wouldn't annoy bikers so much if it were not they who are almost always at the end of the circle of blame. I have seldom met a pedestrian dedicated to carrying on a lifelong vendetta against motorists, or vice versa. Yet one can hardly bring up this subject without turning up both pedestrians and motorists who stoke and nurse lifelong hostility toward cyclists. Dig a little and one finds, often, that this rage stems from one incident some variable time ago. Pedestrians, yes, do have something to fear from collisions with cyclists, collisions both can usually avoid by purging their minds of half-century-old delusions. Hostile motorists, on the other hand, may want to consider anger management as well as education, since what they drive meets the legal standard of a deadly weapon. The number of drivers hostile to bicycles has been slowly shrinking over the last 30 years, at least in my experience, but the ones who remain seem dedicated to making up the difference with aggressiveness and noise.
The circle of pedestrian blaming cyclist, cyclist blaming pedestrian, motorist blaming cyclist, etc., ad nauseam, resembles nothing so much as Thomas Nast's noted 19th century cartoon of the Tweed Ring, with everyone pointing the finger of blame at their neighbour:
In fact, everyone should be pointing that finger at themselves.
Speaking objectively, what makes a certain portion of motorists so enraged at cyclists? Probably one part is an unwillingness to share the road: note that motorcyclists report similar experiences. It's a commonplace among them that noisy pipes are a defence mechanism: the loud exhausts make the presence of a motorcycle patently obvious. The pipes plus the leathers plus the reputation make motorcyclists too intimidating for all but the most psychotic of drivers to cross. This does not work for bicyclists.
Further, all drivers are sometimes pedestrians, and most pedestrians are sometimes drivers. Despite the trouble both have in respecting the other's space, neither can claim ignorance of the other's experience.
A much smaller proportion of the population are adult cyclists. Thus we have ignorance of rights and of physics; thus we have invisibility, and thus we have a eagerness to shift blame onto the piece of the equation most people do not understand.
No one around here should put on airs and compare themselves favourably with other road users. In global public opinion, everyone occupying Greater Boston streets is almost as hostile and homicidal as Boston drivers, whose hostility is legendary the world over. The average performance of Boston cyclists can only rise above the norm if all cyclists originated in another dimension. At times, everyone concerned seems to think this is true.
If I weren't writing this, I'd already have forgotten those pedestrians (and the wrong-way bikers who complicated my life a couple of days before). Even writing about them, I'll forget the incidents I've mentioned in a fortnight. Why then is it necessary to nurse these grudges against cyclists for months, for years, for a lifetime? Does life offer nothing better?
Labels: Bicycles, motorists, pedestrians
posted by Uncle | 00:40
1 Comments:
The virtue of that hate-bikers mentality is that it is socialization, community. Among the many downsides are death, dismemberment, resentment, hostility, irrational behavior, and widespread bile.
As sociologists and psychologists like to call it, that is hand-clasping. It's an accepted form of bigotry, one that people understand and let tie them to their fellows. Thus it was and is with racism, xenophobia and such.
Pity, you'd have to be in the 100-plus IQ group to naturally rise above such impulses. Otherwise, you'd need to have been raised by genteel and reasonable parents.
I don't count on either of those. I join you in caution.
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