Arguing with anti-cyclists on the net

[lph]

Yeah, yeah, I know it's pointless But I can't help trying sometimes.

There's been a very sad, fatal accident in the news recently involving two cyclists riding on the sidewalk, which is legal here. Apparently they crashed or bumped into each other, and one of them fell into the road and was run over by a bus The article of course spawned the usual spate of dumb-*** comments, and I sort of ended up arguing on a Facebook page called "I don't care where you ride, just get the hell out of the road". Add capitals for extra effect. It's not that bad discussing there as you might think, because several other cyclists I "know" from the net have been spending time there patiently arguing reason, and some of the most virulent anti-cyclists have actually started to be more moderate.

I'm not going to hang around for long, but so far it feels like carefully, carefully inserting a little sense into people, one post at a time. And it is pretty interesting uncovering the prejudices people have against cyclists. For some reason they've been very happily re-posting news about and gloating over the various doping scandals in pro cycling, which seems completely bizarre to me. I mean, I have about as much in common with Lance Armstrong as I have with a rabbit. But they seem to view cycling clothing = wannabe pro = Lance worshipper. So I tried to point out in a friendly manner that, well, all cycling gear meant for use on the road just basically looks like that, tight and garish.

I even wrote a whole little essay on how bike paths/MUPs are not like roads, that I haven't been able to use yet I imagined an average bike path as a road, with two-way traffic, no signs, no traffic rules, no speed limit, and lots of cyclists (ie pedestrians), allowed to ride wherever they want and veer at will.

Oh well. Anyone else bother to do stuff like this?

[Jo-n-NY]

I feel so bad for those cyclists and very bad for the one that fell into the road. I try not to look at those type of comments because it just gets me all riled (sp?) up. As far as connecting cycling & doping of the pros, I mentioned in another post that it is probably in most other sports, football, wrestling, bodybuilding etc. they are just not tested as intensely as cycling. Nobody is putting down baseball and the "hearsay" on the drugs Roger Clemens he was seen using but were not detected.

[lph]

Ok, I'm getting old. I wrote all the above but forgot what I really wanted to post, which is a link a cyclist posted on said FB page:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health...o_wheels_.html

It has a couple of really good points. Like why "cyclists" get treated as a group, but "drivers" don't. It drives me crazy. If I've had an encounter with some crazy driver I've stopped telling people at work, except the ones I know cycle themselves. It always devolves into headshaking and ranting over "cyclists".

This really flummoxes me. I know there are dumb cyclists out there, I see them every day. But I see just as many dumb drivers. They run red lights, don't yield, they honk and are obnoxious. Dumb behaviour is equally distributed, because people are dumb. Everyone does dumb stuff sometimes. Do drivers really not notice other dumb drivers? Or do they realize that that's the sort of dumb stuff they could do themselves, and therefore excusable?

[ZenBiker]

Good article, thanks for posting the link. The point about it being easier to lump people together when you perceive them as different from yourself was interesting. I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense. Most of the drivers I talk to about cycling cannot imagine why someone would ride a bike on the streets (as opposed to mountain biking, which they are more likely to get or at least accept). We tend to dislike and even fear what we don't understand.

[OakLeaf]

There is an ingrained respect for pedestrians on the road.

Some places, maybe.

Just last week, someone was charged for a hit-skip that happened in Florida in March. She ran down two 14-year-old girls, killing one of them, and took off. Seven months later, having admitted she was messing with her phone when it happened, she's being charged only with leaving the scene, NOT with vehicular homicide. The prosecutor explained it's because the girls were wearing the wrong color clothes and walking on the wrong side of the road.

No respect for anyone not in a car - bicyclist, pedestrian, or even motorcyclist - in most places that I'm aware of.


I have to say, I have the scripts that allow comments on newspapers turned off for security reasons, but most of the time I'm really glad I don't have to see the comments.

[Melalvai]

I rarely engage online, but I did a few months ago after the tv website had just switched to facebook comments, and they covered a bike-car collision (no fatalities). Because they'd just switched to the facebook thing I was able to see that the idiots were in high school. (Knowing that bit of background made a difference in how I viewed the comments.) So I patiently explained that no, the school track is not a viable alternative to highways. Neither is the 3/4 mile bike path in town. How fast the conversation dried up.

But mostly I stay out of it. If I get the least bit upset I get out of there.

[shootingstar]

That's awful lph on that fatality.

I dunno. I find I don't want to engage in sparring with people on the 'Net about cyclists.

But it's worse when I know some people in my work group just....don't respect cyclists. They haven't said it to my face except for maybe once or twice. It's the face to face "conflict" that gets pushed underground that is a nagging irritation at times.

[Geonz]

I remember seeing that Slate article and figured it said where our culture still was with that category of people. Slashdot also had an article about the increase in cycling what with high gas prices here, and most comments definitely considered people who rode bikes to be a "them, not us" group, and definitely a lower echelon of so-called human. There were a couple of people posting who were cyclists and explained its benefits and those posts got good ratings for being, if I remember right, "interesting" rather than "insightful" (though I'm not sure ... but I remember figuring that yes, the overwhelming majority of nerds (slashdot is "news for nerds") seemed to be sedentary.

It's that idea that the car-centric lifestyle is righteous and good that is galling... but it's typical human behavior. If there's a change we don't want to make, we tend to defensively arrange our opinions around that change being inferior... people who have made the change, therefore, must be beneath us so we don't have to face what we don't want to face.

Whether I post depends on where my head is. I'll put something out there if I can do it constructively, because I figure some readers will be bikers too, and because I *don't* like the cliquey escalations that happen when people start feeding off each other.

I know some folks in my realm disdain me but there are 2 car-free folks in our department (and we're not even in New York ) -- and a fair number of staff folks here ride at least some of the time.

[ZenBiker]

It's that idea that the car-centric lifestyle is righteous and good that is galling...

Where I live, oil and natural gas production is king. The local economy depends on it, and people tend to equate it with patriotism as well (domestic production = stronger, more independent nation). Cyclists are often viewed with deep suspicion, assumed to be anti-oil and a therefore a threat to the American way of life. Or at the very least, weird.

It probably sounds like I'm exaggerating. Certainly not everyone in town feels this way, but here's a sampling of the bumper stickers I see on the way to work, mostly on the back of really big pickups:
Earth First. We'll Drill The Other Planets Later
If You Believe in Climate Change, Ride a Polar Bear to Work
I ❤ Drilling (this one is everywhere)

Kind of hard to feel welcome on these streets.

[shootingstar]

Where I live, oil and natural gas production is king. The local economy depends on it, and people tend to equate it with patriotism as well (domestic production = stronger, more independent nation). Cyclists are often viewed with deep suspicion, assumed to be anti-oil and a therefore a threat to the American way of life. Or at the very least, weird.

It probably sounds like I'm exaggerating. Certainly not everyone in town feels this way, but here's a sampling of the bumper stickers I see on the way to work, mostly on the back of really big pickups:
Earth First. We'll Drill The Other Planets Later
If You Believe in Climate Change, Ride a Polar Bear to Work
I ❤ Drilling (this one is everywhere)

Kind of hard to feel welcome on these streets.

Wow. I haven't quite seen bumper stickers like that in our neck of the woods. I'm sorry that is truly ruthless and obnoxious...for an industry if you visited such areas (oil sands)...would be a form of dystopia literally and psychologically.

But then there are people who strut around in their shirts or jackets with an oil sand company logo. Totally relate to you Zen. Alberta is Canada's oil and natural gas producing province. Well, hey it's the notorious Enbridge Company in Alberta that wants to ram a pipeline through the U.S. from the oil sands area ...and across to British Columbia which is getting alot of opposition. Now they're thinking of rerouting to eastern Canada.

The oil companies fund some of the environmental organizations here...some of it is genuine, some it is greenwashing. Yes, of course there's a number of dedicated cyclists who are dedicated employees of oil firms..just as I'm sure there are here.

At least I haven't heard or sensed that being a cyclist was being unpatriotic or un-Canadian. We're just wierd and minor pain in the neck for the oil industry lovers....who are more interested in stuff related to millions of revenue...not bikes, for Pete's sake.

Right now there is public venting because the City has a new policy to clear 10 kms. of road bike lanes of snow regularily in the downtown area ---out of hundreds of thousands city roads..and quite a number of drivers are going ballistic over this.

I lie low...make polite empathetic noises to employees who complain to me that their suburban the roads never get snow-cleared.

Zen, be assured that are a few in the oil industry who don't feel that type of aggressive BS about cyclists at all. Here is dearie... http://blogs.calgaryherald.com/2011/...le-conference/ (He hates the reference oil man because he was never in an executive role in the firm.)

[ZenBiker]

Great article, thanks for posting the link! Hope the conference was a success.

Someone asked me recently what I'd do if I could pick a second career. I said I would choose urban planner, specializing in bikable, walkable communities. Now, whether I do anything with that idea or not remains to be seen...

[smilingcat]

Perception about cyclists are wrong.

When I still had a job, one of my co-workers quipped "... Guy thought I had too many DUI's and was forced to ride a bicycle to commute..."

The jist I get is that cyclists ride a bicycle because we have some flaw, personal, moral or financial flaw thus less than the average person out on the street.

No you can't really change those who are unwilling to see other views let alone even begin to understand that other views are just as valid as their's. They do not see cyclists as another human being. Something less than they themselves. Thus they are callous when they say, they (cyclists) deserve to be hit and killed. It's okay because in their mind cyclists have been dehumanized just as military train soldiers to view the enemy as not as human, to dehumanize the enemy such that it becomes easier for the soldier to kill.

I can't wait till our infrastructure changes to be more bike centric. "Mom what are those loud things on the road? Big boxy thing with 4 big tires and making gawd awful noise and spewing out smelly gas" me "Honey, those are automobiles when people burnt gasoline indiscriminately to get around. That was the age when gas was really cheap. The people who operated those things were drivers and they felt superior to all of us who rode our bicycles."