sometimes you're the windshield
I saw a woman on a bike get into an accident with car while I was running this morning. She saw it coming and was able to slow down and brace herself for it, so the end result was that she bent her front wheel and hurt her wrist as she collided with the rear passenger door. The bicyclist had the right of way in the weird intersection, and the ( Read more... )
I think, like lostingeekdom, that with a bicycle you definitely have to be assertive because cars will not allow you in any other way. I think it's annoying when car drivers claim that bicyclists seem entitled because it's sorta like when men get call assertive women bitches. Men are allowed to be assertive by default, because society is built to accept that from them, so when women do it, it sticks out, because women aren't supposed to be assertive. American culture is designed around the car, and car drivers are constantly behaving in entitled, asshatty ways, but they don't see that about themselves, because it's the status quo. When a bicycle does it, suddenly the bicyclist is behaving like a jerk, even if they're behaving in a manner that is the default for car drivers.
I also think that a lot of people driving cars are behaving even worse than cyclists from within their cars, but people don't notice, because when the windows are all rolled up, a car is this impersonal metal blob, while as the person riding the bicycle and their mood and their outbursts are out there in the open for all to see. I mean, I have been in cars listening to outbursts of the most awful hate and rage, but from outside the car you would never know.
Finally, I think that although there are jerks on either side of this debate, sometimes the problem is that people in cars are sealed into a cocoon and can't see how their vehicle is perceived from the outside. When you're driving a car, you sort of see the car as an extension of yourself. The interior is quiet and padded and the air is filtered and you get none of the sense of the size of the road or the noise or the pavement texture. It's completely different from being outside the car on a bicycle, where it's noisy and it's bumpy and there is sensory overload from all directions. You have to watch way more angles than a car and you're way more vulnerable to potholes or debris. And I don't think drivers really appreciate that. It's like Lennie accidentally squishing the mouse in "Of Mice and Men." It's not out of malice, it's just that he doesn't realize how much bigger and stronger he is than the mouse. For instance, when I used to ride around Brooklyn, there was this one street right alongside a park. It was one way and very narrow and there were always people illegally parked, dropping their kids off at the park or whatever. I would often be riding my bike along the street, as far to the side as I could get, watching for opening doors and darting kids and all. So cars would come along behind me and I could hear them but they would inevitably decide, right as they got behind me, to BLARE their horn. And not just a little beep either, but a big honk. I don't think they were doing it to be jerks, I think they were legitimately trying to say "Hey, watch out, I'm behind you." But the effect that they would always have would be to scare the ever living daylights out of me because it would be SO LOUD. I would always jerk and sometimes even swerve a little because I was so surprised. And it would inevitably leave me shaken to feel like I almost swerved in front of this car because they honked so loud. To the driver, the horn seemed reasonable. They had NO IDEA how loud it sounds from outside the cocoon. So I think sometimes there's a little bit of that disconnect going on. Drivers think they've given a cyclist plenty of room but the cyclist perceives that they are being crowded off the road, etc.
And that is my long discussion of the subject.
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