An article by Alastair Dalton, the Scotsman’s transport correspondent, has caused Edinburgh’s cyclists to grind their gears. Dalton is usually a reasonable chap whose preferred method of urban travel is cycling. He now writes about the bad blood between the two tribes – cyclists and motorists (of course many people are both) when they share the same space:-
For some drivers, seeing cyclists running red lights, riding on pavements and not having lights sparks fury. But some cyclists retort that not only are some motorists guilty of similar offences, the potential impact of them doing the same is much greater.
Just because some drivers break laws does not mean it’s ok for cyclists to do so too, believing that for them there are unlikely to be any consequences.
The roads are an unequal place, errant drivers are far more likely to kill or injure cyclists than vice versa, and the focus should be on educating them to give cyclists more respect.
In my opinion - and some riders will vehemently disagree - the way to do that is for cyclists to be beyond reproach themselves. The inconvenient truth is that cyclists need drivers to change their ways more than vice versa.
Being put in danger by a driver fuming at the bad behaviour of a cyclist who is not you is of course highly unjust, even if it’s psychologically true. Also, does that work for other road users? Pedestrians, eyes on smart phones, walk into the road – does that mean Pedestrian Smart Phone puts Hobbling Old Lady, who is a little slow on a pedestrian crossing, at greater risk from a cross driver?
Bad cycling annoys me as well, partly because it is bad, and dangerous, and sometimes scary. And yes, because it gives us all a bad name. But it’s infuriating to think that way. Making comparisons with minorities/women who have to be twice as good to succeed is bleh for urban cyclists who are mostly from a socially privileged group. But in those terms, it is the driver who is seen as the norm, the judge, the one who sets the standards, the cyclist the deviant.
Drivers do get angry with other drivers texting, passing too close, tail gating, not indicating and otherwise driving badly and dangerously. However they never think “this reflects on my class/group” because they don’t think of themselves as a class/group except when their privileges are threatened. Then they get as furious as a grandee in the early twentieth century having his income tax increased and death duties slapped on his stately home. That’s when a driver suddenly become the hard-pressed motorist, unreasonably discriminated against. It’s the howl of the unthinkingly privileged.
Some cyclists behaving badly is often used as an excuse for not spending money on providing infrastructure for them. As often said, no other transport group is required to behave itself before being provided for. Air fuel duty is not increased because of drunken idiots on aeroplanes and public transport isn’t cut with the idea of this being one in the eye for louts and thugs on buses.
Cyclists have miniscule amounts spent on their provision. When it comes to transport, they are at the bottom of the pile. In transport terms they are the poor and lowly, and except in the tenets of Christianity, the poor and lowly are not treated with respect. If cyclists were universally well behaved they would get no more money spent on them. They would then be the grateful pauper, who knows his place and who still gets more kicks than ha’pence. If they had good, well-designed infrastructure, and their place in the hierarchy of urban travellers, i.e. below pedestrians but well above cars, they would be treated with the respect that affluence receives. The errant ones among them might even behave better, and their misbehaviour would not be tutted over as an example of the undeservingness of all of their kind.