Washington, DC: provincial to me - but full of cycling savages according to one Facebook user |
During a visit last week, it nevertheless occurred what an
advantage it was that Washington seemed a far
calmer place than New York
to ride a bike. The cyclists I saw during the visit mostly seemed to be riding
sedately, calmly and in general harmony with other road users around them.
This was, however, entirely the wrong conclusion, according
to at least one person I know. On Friday evening, two days after I came back
from my DC daytrip, a Facebook friend commented on a story about an altercation between a cyclist and a motorist in North-West Washington the night I visited. The motorist
appears to have somehow alarmed the cyclist, who responded by hitting the
driver’s car with his D-Lock. The ensuing argument ended with the cyclist
stabbing the motorist, who suffered rib injuries but looks likely to survive.
“Savages,” my Facebook friend commented. “Civility is an
alien concept,” someone else replied in agreement. The clear implication was
that I, as a cyclist, was complicit in an appalling, entirely unjustified
assault of a kind I would never have contemplated.
My immediate instinct was to launch into an argument,
pointing out the fatuousness of jumping from a single, knife-wielding cyclist
to the implied generalisation – all cyclists are savages. Concluding that I was
unlikely to change clearly entrenched attitudes, I limited myself to “unfriending”
the person responsible.
But, as I cycled home that evening, a more mature reflection
occurred to me – one sparked in part by the controversy in the UK over the inflammatory “War on Britain ’s
Roads” documentary. If it made no sense to draw a conclusion from a single
stabbing - or the misleading footage of an alleycat race in the documentary - to cyclists’ general behaviour, why did I
feel free to criticise in general the culture of driving or the police? Was I
making any more sense than my former Facebook friend?
One possible response to the “cyclists are savages” claim
would, of course, have been to point to some of the numerous incidents of
motorist-cyclist violence. In the space of a year of cycling in London , I suffered one
actual – albeit mild – assault and had to make an emergency call to police to
avert another. The first incident involved a bus driver who abandoned his bus –
and passengers - to confront me because I’d photographed him blocking,
illegally, a cyclist-only area at traffic lights. He smashed the mobile ‘phone
I was using as a camera out of my hand. The second incident came as I tried to
photograph a motorist I’d previously seen deliberately drive across the path of
a cyclist who’d complained about his driving. He threatened – alarmingly
convincingly - to smash up both me and my camera.
The most pertinent case I could have raised, however, was
the stabbing in September of Colin Albright, a cyclist in Pittsburgh , whom a motorist pursued as he
carried his bike away from a road up a set of steps. The motorist stabbed
Albright repeatedly, including in the throat, possibly over some perceived
slight involving a traffic incident.
You might have prejudices about people who make strange transport choices - like skateboarding down Sixth Avenue. It doesn't mean you know anything about this individual skateboarder. |
Albright’s case would have been pertinent precisely because
it illustrates the absurdity of generalising from something extraordinarily
rare – a stabbing over a disagreement on the roads – to the generality of
day-by-day on-road relationships. In late October, Anthony Scholl confessed to attacking Albright. Scholl was already in custody over an alleged attempt to
burn down his parents’ house. While there is little information so far on
Scholl’s motive for stabbing Albright, the alleged arson attempt seems to have
been aimed, in Scholl’s mind, at preventing his parents from killing him and
feeding him to their (presumably imaginary) pet alligator. Albright’s stabbing also looks likely to have
stemmed from what Scholl’s mother has called his “psychological issues”. It
seems similarly unlikely that the appalling Washington stabbing will turn out to involve
an ordinary, mentally-balanced cycle commuter who just happens to pack a knife
to mete out summary justice on uppity drivers.
That anyone could ever have thought the Washington stabbing had anything to do with
broader cyclist behaviour, of course, stems from humans’ powerful desire to pin
blame for problems on out-groups. The only thing so far known about the Washington motorist’s
assailant is that he was on a means of transport against which large numbers of people have powerful prejudices. Few people have the mental self-discipline to
avoid working on the basis of such limited information and their prejudices to
jump to wholly unwarranted conclusions.
It’s telling, for example, that hardly anyone blames the
antics of bank robbers’ getaway drivers purely on their being drivers. Drivers
are too numerous and familiar to act as convenient out-group scapegoats. No-one
sought to blame the assault I suffered or the threatened assault merely on the
perpetrators’ status as motorists. I received, instead, some close questioning
about the immigration status of the bus driver and the race of the man who
threatened to assault me. Establish a link to immigrants or African-Caribbean
men, the implication seemed to be, and the incidents were far more easily
explained away.
A cyclist, cars and pedestrians at 55th Street. Which of them is a "savage" will be in the eye of the beholder |
The truth is that, in all the incidents I’ve described,
the attackers acted as individuals, rather than a member of a group. Their
behaviour stemmed from their own characters or mental states, rather than their
status as cyclists, motorists, bus drivers, immigrants or anything else. To
imagine that the behaviour in a single instance of a single member of a large
group has anything to say about the wider group as a whole is a thinking error
of a kind that would be shocking were it not also fairly common.
That point could, of course, lay me open to the objection
someone recently made in an online forum to my use of statistics to point out
that cars generally posed a far greater danger to pedestrians than bikes. That
was beside the point, the poster wrote. Each motorist or driver differs so much
that it makes no sense to discuss a general level of risk from motorists or
cyclists. A very poor cyclist could conceivably pose a greater danger to a
pedestrian than an extremely careful, conscientious motorist. I am perhaps
particularly vulnerable to such a charge because of my habit of illustrating
points on this blog by reference to specific – usually extreme – incidents that
I take to illuminate a wider truth.
Yet I have, I hope, been careful when complaining about
general problems to have sought evidence that my experience speaks to a broader reality. It remains a verifiable fact, for example, that motorists kill a disproportionately high number of other road users in both the UK and New York City. Collisions with cyclists in both places
account for a far lower proportion of road fatalities than cyclists make up of
road traffic. Research in New York
suggests motorists’ failure to yield as required to pedestrians is the biggest
single cause of road deaths. Research in the UK suggests failure on motorists’
part to pay attention causes a disproportionate number of crashes.
Court Street at night. Just because most motorists speed here doesn't mean they all do. |
It makes sense on such a basis to say there is a general
problem with motorists’ failure to yield to New York
pedestrians or to pay proper attention in the UK . I am even confident enough in
my own judgement to diagnose a few more local, unmeasured problems. There is,
for example, a general problem that many motorists regard Brooklyn ’s
Court Street as an appropriate place for excessive speed and not somewhere
where cyclists’ requirement for space on the roads need be considered. It just
doesn’t make sense to predict on this basis that the next motorist one
encounters on Court Street won’t be a model of caution, courtesy and respect.
I feel acutely sorry for the victim of the Washington stabbing. His experience last
Wednesday must have been appallingly frightening. I trust the District of Columbia police will swiftly
identify the attacker and bring him before the courts. I wish the victim a
swift and smooth recovery. But I also devoutly hope that no-one in future will
make the lazy and offensive mistake of imagining any of what happened had
anything to do with me.
Stereotypes aside, a car at 40mph has at least 80 times the impact energy of a cyclist/bike at 20. Far more than operator characteristics, that disparity explains why motor vehicles disproportionally maim and kill pedestrians.
ReplyDeleteSteve A,
DeleteYou are, of course, right about the physics of the situation - and it's a point I've made several times before. But I thought for once I'd get away from going on about safety and whine about nasty people being nasty about cyclists (another of my Great Themes). Your point is nevertheless a useful corrective to some of the things I've said, so thank you.
All the best,
Invisible.
Great post and blog. I just spent way too much time at work reading your previous posts. You have some great inisights about human behavior and cycling. I have always felt a great deal of unexplainable anger and rage from drivers in this city when on a bike. I have never been able to comprehend exactly why they seem to hate me so much merely for riding a bike and following the ruls/laws. You make some great points about individual versus group behavior. thanks, NB
ReplyDeleteNYC_Cyclist,
DeleteYou are too kind - and I always feel a surge of joy when I hear I've helped someone to waste a lot of time through this blog. I probably shouldn't feel that way, I know, particularly now that the US economy is about to go off a cliff (or whatever).
You are entirely right that people feel irrational anger towards bikes - but I should tell you the atmosphere is pretty similar in London, from where I moved in August. I think it's the kind of low-grade, inarticulate anger that people feel towards people who do things differently from them. Apologies if you've already read it, but I expounded my theory on the subject at greater length back in January here: http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-some-people-get-angry-with-cyclists.html
Don't let the angry people put you off. History isn't on their side,
Invisible.
Cheers! And if you couldn't tell from my handle I am in NYC too. Love to go for a ride together sometime. Neil 'NYC_Cyclist' - nebregman@gmail.com
Delete