Lately, it seems, there has been a rash of stories about how drivers and cyclists can get along. It’s not an easy question to answer (if it were easy it would have already been done).
Steven Elbow of madison.com recently wrote a sprawling account of the bicyclist/driver confrontation in which he listed all the reasons drivers hate cyclists
[How do I hate thee, let me count the ways..]. In it he examines bad
cyclist behavior (as did Froggie recently in a post about why drivers hate cyclist), a driver’s sense of superiority that comes from having
a license and insurance, cyclist attire, partisan politics, cyclist
“attitude,” driver fear, resource concerns, and bully tendencies. It is
an excellent article full of facts and research. Some of the better
parts:
Dave Schlabowske, Milwaukee’s bicycle and pedestrian
coordinator, says he’s done plenty of traffic studies that show
that at least 60 percent of the cars on the road at any given time
are speeding. When it comes to stopping for pedestrians at
crosswalks, 90 percent don’t.
“But they see this bicyclist roll up to a red light and then
just roll through it, to them it seems so obvious and so
egregious,” he says. “But they never think, ‘Well, I was just
breaking the law for the last eight miles.’ They’re not thinking
about their own behavior.”
…
So
I agree, there isn’t one source of cyclist-directed anger (and, like
Elbow, I also think the anger flows more in one direction). The conflict has many dimensions. There is one conflict over space and another about resources.
There is a problem in that both see the road and the issues differently. Cyclists on the road – for whom arrival times are pretty constant – are focused on their safety. Drivers, who are pretty safe in their cars, are more focused on traffic flow and convenience. Both see the other as an impediment to their goals. Some drivers see cyclists as interlopers who refuse to follow the rules and who thus need to straighten up to earn the right to the road, but they don’t seem to see cyclists as a threat. Most of the
anger I hear directed at drivers, on the other hand, is about dangerous driving or outright
harassment. (Though some people do hate drivers just for driving –
usually for environmental or health reasons. It is a
counterproductive attitude in my opinion.)
National Journal recently discussed the space and resource competition, asking if bicyclists and pedestrians will squeeze out cars. [Andy Clarke’s response is particularly good if you have the time] While Patrick Natale of the ASCE pulls out the old “cyclists don’t pay for roads” canard and Bill Graves of the American Trucking Association defends the status quo (“At least 80 percent of U.S. communities receive their goods exclusively by truck.” Yes, and that’s part of the problem) the other respondents note that it isn’t a zero sum game. Earl Blumenauer makes the excellent point that investing in biking and walking often requires less money for similar gains. Talking about a bridge improvement project in Portland he notes that “planners invested $50,000 for bike and pedestrian improvements, rather
than upwards of the $10 million that would have been necessary if they
had simply accommodated the same user increase just for cars.” The cyclists who use that bridge didn’t appear out of the ether. Some of them were probably drivers. So the bike investment improved things for cyclists and drivers. This is a message that needs to be repeated over and over.
It doesn’t help that drivers don’t directly see the positive externalities of cyclists (cleaner air, less CO2, more parking, less congestion, etc…), they just see the person who, in that moment, is slowing them down.
Jonathon Simmons, writing at Boston.com lists an assortment of things cyclists and others can do to help find peace between drivers and cyclists. While I agree with much of the list, I wouldn’t qualify it as advocacy. If you’re riding safely or courteously for advocacy, you’re doing it for the wrong reason. You should do those things because you care about your safety and the safety of others, and because it is the right way to share the road. By all means ride safe and ride courteously, but I’m not going to list that as something to do to get along on the road.
So what can heal the divide? I include three items:
1. Like Elbow, I think the best way to heal cyclist-motorists animosity is to get more motorists on a bike. Most cyclists are drivers from time to time, but few drivers know what it’s like to ride in rush hour traffic. The more people who know what it’s like to ride, the greater the sense of empathy. Most of the issues Elbow lists have to do with a fundamental misunderstand on the part of motorists, and getting more people biking is really the only way to deal with it. Most cities are already pursuing policies to get more people on bikes, the most important of these are bike sharing systems, which have the potential to be game changers.
2. Decriminalizing normal, safe biking behavior. I’m not going to tell cyclists to stop at stop signs and wait on stop lights when that isn’t what I do. Nor do I think it makes them safer – in fact evidence out of Idaho is that it makes them less safe. Some feel that when cyclists run stop signs and stop lights that makes all cyclists look bad. They may be right, because the behavior is illegal. But that behavior is also pretty rational. And that makes the game unwinnable from a game theory standpoint. It breaks down like this as I see it: if all participants follow traffic control device laws literally (which is a bit irrational) then all participants win, but if one participant runs lights and signs (which is more rational) than all participants lose. Why even play that game? And, we aren’t actually guaranteed that if all participants behave irrationally everyone wins, since drivers often complain about legal and safe cycling behavior. So rather than forcing cyclists to behave irrationally to appease drivers – which is probably impossible, it makes more sense to make cycling laws more rational so that cycling, as everyone does it, is legal.
3. Sheath the finger. I’ve done it. Someone passes you way too close, or yells at you that you “aren’t a car” or honks at you to get out of the way and out comes the middle finger. It’s so easy and so succinct. It also doesn’t really help. That person is not going to see your finger and do some soul-searching about their selfishness and come out tomorrow a better person. They’re going to think that cyclists are self-righteous jerks. Unlike rolling through stop signs, there is nothing rational about this. As hard as it is, we have to try to turn the other cheek.
