Why no man is an island - even in his car

One day in 2001, I was standing by an intersection in Pristina, the monument to dingy Yugoslav urban design that serves as Kosovo’s capital. A souped-up saloon car squeezed inside a vehicle stopped by a set of traffic lights. Then, the moment the lights showed amber, the saloon car’s wheels screamed. It accelerated forward, then swung round in front of the other vehicle. The driver wanted to get ahead as the two cars turned left. The overtaking driver could easily have lost control of his vehicle and spun off the road; he could have hit the other driver as he swung round – and he moved himself only one place up a line of traffic that was probably just going to join a traffic jam further on.

A KLA policeman: tellingly, not looking eager
to tackle Kosovo's traffic culture problem

The following year, I was cycling through the centre of Budapest, then my home city, when a car cut suddenly across my path. Shocked and thinking the driver might simply not have seen me, I slapped a side panel of his car. When the window wound down, the stream of words that issued started “a büdös anyád” (your stinking mother). A general tone thus established, the driver went on to suggest that I shouldn’t be on the road - and that he was well within his rights to act like a homicidal maniac.

The incidents in Pristina and Budapest helped to germinate the seed of an idea that was already planted in my mind. I began increasingly to pay close attention to what light the culture of a country’s roads shed on its wider society. It was illuminating precisely because, to people sitting inside cars, using a road often feels like a purely private enterprise. On busy roads, it is in fact one of the most complex social interactions many human beings undertake.

Budapest: beautiful - but one driver was
misinformed about my mother's personal hygiene

It perhaps wasn’t surprising that Kosovo’s road culture was fairly nihilistic. On a previous visit to Kosovo, shortly after the 1999 war, I had found a farm in western Kosovo whose courtyard was scattered with human ashes and bodies left for the dogs. According to local Albanians, it was the aftermath of a massacre by Serb forces. By the time I saw the bad driving just under two years later, most Kosovo Serbs had left either because of revenge attacks or the expectation of them. The callousness towards others and contempt for the rule of law that had marred Kosovo’s recent history carried straight over, it seemed to me, to how people drove.

Hungary was nothing like as damaged a society as Kosovo – despite the horrors of decades of first right-wing dictatorship and then Communism. But I would regularly report on the miserable living conditions of those who lived in dirty hovels on the edges of towns or run-down bits of Budapest – the country’s gypsies. My experience with the angry motorist – and the boorish tendency of drivers of the most powerful cars on the country’s motorways to drive at speeds that seriously endangered older, slower-moving cars – suggested vulnerable road users attracted similar contempt.

But in Hungary, Kosovo and many other long-misgoverned parts of the world, decades of misrule have discredited both the rule of law and any sense of a wider social good. In such societies, it became heroic to defy even good laws because those imposing them were so distrusted. The negative examples nevertheless suggest something about how road users should conduct themselves in healthier societies. Members of a well-ordered society abide not just by its agreed laws but also by the higher principle that they seek, as far as possible, to respect each other’s interests. They pay particular attention to the interests of the most vulnerable, who are least able to stand up for themselves. They restrain their exercise of their own rights to enhance others’ ability to enjoy theirs.

So we shouldn't be constantly worrying, it seems to me, what others might do to us if we break the rules or behave discourteously. We should all be thinking what our behaviour says about ourselves and our society. If we behave rudely or flout the rules, even if it does no direct harm, we tell those that see us that we are uninterested in their wellbeing. Every time we break road rules, we tell those that see us that we despise the rule of law generally. We’re slowly but surely corroding the bonds that ought to bind us together as a society – and as people who share the limited, precious space our society devotes to roads.

Those who regularly follow the developed world’s controversies over the role of cycling will by now think they know what’s coming. This could easily be the point where I start to bemoan the behaviour of some of my fellow cyclists, shaking my head metaphorically over how those that jump red lights, ride on pavements and so forth besmirch the good name of the rest of us.

My point is, I hope, a bit more subtle. To protect vulnerable road users, it's vital to pay most attention to the vehicles that do most harm. Politicians, police forces and journalists in many countries express outrage at cyclists’ alleged general disrespect for the law. But the less conspicuous law-breaking of motor vehicle drivers – the breaking of speed limits, the driving while distracted by a telephone and the contempt for measures meant to keep cyclists safe – kills thousands of people each year in most developed countries. Many motorists would be surprised how often their fellow motorists even ignore red lights - the failing often, in Britain at least, assumed to be particular to cyclists. I have twice narrowly avoided cars that were simply driving too fast to spot stop lights when I was heading across their paths. The depressing reluctance of many police forces to regard such behaviour as serious and criminal surely leaves vulnerable road users who try to stand up for their rights more exposed.

But there is no point pretending that some cyclists’ behaviour contributes nothing to the malaise. As I argued in a previous blog, cyclists generally harm no-one but themselves if they run red lights, ride on pavements or head the wrong way up a one-way street. Yet motorists or pedestrians seeing such behaviour must surely, to some extent, feel freer to disregard the rules or behave intolerantly themselves. Cyclists have so much potentially to gain from an improvement in road culture that it is surely worth each cyclist’s pondering which way his or her behaviour shifts the delicate balance between tolerance and intolerance on the roads.

It will not solve everything for cyclists to follow the rules. I have previously argued – and still believe – that much anti-cyclist behaviour stems from a simple irritation at cyclists’ choice of an obviously different way of doing things. I have also often been abused for alleged rule breaking when riding (perfectly properly) on on-pavement cycle paths or using one-way streets with a contraflow cycle lane. Some motorists fly into a rage at seeing a cyclist pulling ahead of them into the boxes that are meant to let cyclists leave traffic lights in most British cities ahead of the cars.

But there is a tendency on the part of all road user groups to criticise others for their failure to adhere to the fixed rules of the road – then make up their own minds which rules seriously apply to them. It is a system few people think appropriate with regard to the rules about assault or theft – and one that is no more appropriate about the rules for how people share the roads. Consequently, when I get on board my bike today, I will be looking out for - and trying to obey - traffic lights, one-way street signs and all the other myriad traffic symbols I see about me. It may not directly make my day better. It may not even make me directly safer. But it will reflect my conviction that, because my actions affect a far wider circle of people than myself, I have to respect the only commonly-agreed set of rules that we have.