Many of us ride bikes. We ride them to work, to school, to dinner and drinks, to the homes of our friends. We ride morning, noon and night, the last being especially fraught with danger. Most of us are invisible then, despite our flashing headlights and taillights.
Too many tales of biker-directed rage, and more dangerously, indifference, have blown across the cluttered seas of my desk of late. My own small contribution to this burgeoning collective narrative is a story from a couple of years ago. I was biking home from a party at my friend’s house in the Avenues and was within a half-mile of the warmth and comfort of my bed after a chilly October night. A black SUV full of jerks rolled by and one of them threw his Big Gulp all over me. I was soaked and sticky and pretty seriously nonplussed. I was angry for a while in that way where you’re angry but you know there’s literally nothing you can do unless you hire a PI or a bounty hunter but you wouldn’t, you couldn’t.
Now I can (sort of) joke about the story, but really, I struggle to identify with the mindset of the people who despise cyclists so much.
In a recent, strikingly violent episode, a friend of a friend of mine was accosted by baseball bat-wielding jerks. He was attempting to go straight after a stop sign when the car to his immediate left made a right turn and cut him off, prompting loud, justifiable protestations, which resulted in four men exiting the vehicle equipped for a little bit of America’s new favorite pastime8212;bikeball. His bike was severely beaten, while he himself suffered minor physical injuries.
But again, rage might be less dangerous than indifference. Drivers who aren’t paying attention to bikers have at their disposal many thousands of pounds of metal and glass, and they present the more common fears of the urban cyclist, like getting broadsided at an intersection, cut off in turn lanes, brushed off a narrow road, etc. For every rage-a-holic looking for his next fix, there are 1,000 drivers who are just too busy talking (or worse, texting) on their cell phones, eating, switching tunes and chatting with their BFFs to notice that they’re not the only things on the road.
Within the last month, two employees of the Blue Plate Diner, one a U student and the other an alumnus, were involved in accidents with cars, and in both cases, the drivers left the scene of the accident before authorities could investigate. These people knew they had collided with a cyclist and were more concerned about their own personal legal circumstances than the well-being of the injured victims. That’s indifference for you. This is a crime, literally and figuratively.
Given that many more students are biking to campus now, it’d be good to offer a little primer: Bikes are vehicles. Bikers have as much right to the road as cars, and the laws are the same for everyone. Drivers are supposed to give bikers three feet of passing room, and bikers have to ride single file and obey traffic lights, stop signs, etc. We can bike on sidewalks in all but a small section of downtown, or we can ride with traffic on the road.
Although my more moderately tempered roommate suggests that honey is sweeter than vinegar, sometimes my instinct is to follow Homer Simpson’s advice that sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Plenty of bikers disobey traffic rules and every episode witnessed by a driver only reinforces existing antagonisms.
Once again, the Golden Rule applies8212;bikers will treat car traffic with respect, with the understanding that drivers will reciprocate. Look for us, and we will look for you looking for us.
James Sewell