Warning: This post may piss you off. Good.
Can you spot the problem(s)?
I’m torn. On the one hand, I am a supporter of everyone enjoying bicycling in all of its many forms. Get out there and have fun!
But…
This video represents more than simply the predictable results of running a stop sign.
This is also an illustration of sport bicycling hubris. I have discussed the hegemony of sport bicycling in the U.S. bicycling culture many times (example). I believe it is largely from the behavior and experience of sport bicyclists — such as those you see in this video — that drive the idea that, among other things, bicycling in traffic is dangerous (it is not) and that one needs expensive equipment and special clothing to ride. The hegemony of sport bicycling also sets up expectations for bicyclist behavior in traffic.
Part of what I hope to achieve with Carbon Trace, in whatever small way, is to break this hegemony — to make transportation bicycling (same roads, same rules, same rights — in normal clothes) the driver of bicycling culture.
(Full disclosure: I am not a sport bicyclist. I do not own a racer. I have no interest in riding bicycles fast for exercise or any other reason. I neither follow, nor care about, bicycle racing. If you love that stuff, that’s great.)
We need to get to a place in our culture where we snicker at such antics as a sign of being out of touch — a place where sport bicyclists enjoy their sport, but where they follow the rules of the road because the hegemonic pressure dictates it.
Noted: Plenty of transportation bicyclists ignore traffic laws, too. But who is more visible in the culture? And who might be the most likely to effect change?
Comments 20
Interesting. I totally agree with you on this issue. I also don’t own a racing bike, I don’t want to ride fast, nor do I follow sport bicycling, and in fact I had no idea that sport cyclists had any tendency to run stop signs like this. I find the very notion that some cyclists think it’s ‘okay’ to yell at a law abiding motorist, demanding that the motorist give way, simply because the cyclists have decided that they can’t or won’t to obey Stop signs, utterly contemptible.
If sport cyclists want to use public roads, they need to find ways to bring the traffic code into their sport so that their sport remains safe and legal. If they can’t or won’t do that, then they need to stay off public roads.
By the way, just yesterday, I posted on a different but related theme at The Desegregated Cyclist.
Posted 28 Mar 2012 at 10:19 am ¶This kind of behavior (and attitude) is an ongoing source of frustration for many of us trying to promote equity. It’s so frustrating to try to have a productive conversation about civility and legal equity and get derailed into a discussion of these highly-visible, disruptive cyclists.
The sense of entitlement is shocking if you have not been part of that culture.
What you have is a behavior that begins with belief that bicycles are something other than legitimate vehicles. That belief is pervasive across most sub-groups of bicyclists (as it is in the general public). I have met many people who honestly do not know bicyclists have to obey traffic control devices. They also don’t believe they have a legitimate and equal right to the road, which is why they get caught in the inferiority/priority paradox.
In the sport-cycling culture, that belief is reinforced in the prevailing behavior. Modeling and group-think, coupled with incentive to maintain momentum (average speed is everything), combines into an inappropriate sense of entitlement. Distorted and bizarre behavior, such yelling at other road users who have the right-of-way, becomes normative to members of the group.
Here’s an example: Years ago I arranged a Road 1 class for members of a women’s cycling group. There was a question on the written test at the end of the class that goes something like: “What should a group of cyclists do when approaching a 4way stop sign?” One of the answers was, “hold out your hand to stop cross traffic.” I don’t recall the exact words, but that was the gist of it. Of course, most of us would clearly recognize that’s the wrong answer. But one of the students selected it. When asked why, she said because that’s what she saw the groups she rode with doing all the time, she assumed it was correct.
Posted 28 Mar 2012 at 10:50 am ¶As someone who owns and has raced sport bikes in sanctioned events, bike commuted for 33 years, and has put a lot of sweat equity into bicycling advocacy, this thread pains me a lot. We should not have to assume that bike racing or training has to be done lawlessly.
But the arrogance of some people is amazing. I’ve sometimes commented that bike racers would probably be less than thrilled if their pace line was interrupted by a line of Porsches or Harleys being driven through a red light at high speed, simply because they didn’t feel like stopping. In fact, the racers I know are the first to howl foul when a motorist does something unwise. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, as my Sicilian grandmother often said.
There is nothing about bicycle racing that is antithetical to obeying the law. Its the arrogance that gets in the way. It surely makes training rides a little more complicated if you have to stop at stop signs, but since all of the major race sanctioning organizations actually have rules that must be followed, it should not be a terrible imposition to add one more to the USCF or ACA creed, i.e., obey the traffic code and be a good ambassador for bicycle racing. Frankly, its just common sense to not make a spectacle of your avocation.
I’m not sure what the best solution is. My experience is that a lot of the race and race-wannabe set really don’t listen to “advocates” since we generally don’t look like them. Hell, even in full kit, I don’t shave my legs. What sometimes works is peer or sponsor pressure.
Back in the 1980′s when I raced, we used to use a three mile set of roads around a neighborhood of East Honolulu as an urban training course. We rode it clockwise because all the turns were right turns, and some involved blowing stop signs. The neighborhood, after a few close calls and after enduring more of our obnoxious behavior than they had an obligation to, complained to the Neighborhood Board. After discussion, the Board Chair wrote letters to all the local bike shops, who were our sponsors. The shop owners sat all the teams down and said “look, if you continue to piss off the neighborhoods, we will pull the plug on the sponsorship dime”.
Needless to say, we started behaving ourselves.
I injured my knees in 1992 and stopped racing but continue to commute by bike and still enjoy the simple pleasure of a weekend warrior. The training time is now spent in advocacy. Happily, when riding alone, there is no pressure to conform to groupthink. But I really do think the race and performance folks need to start toeing the line. A cyclist’s bad behavior is Hell on the rest of us.
In closing, I have to say that I see plenty of what Andy would call “normal bicyclists in street clothes” behaving just as badly, but not at 30 mph. Not only that, but since they often are commuting in rush hour, their antics are observed by a lot of motorists. So lest we cast the first stone at others, let’s first make sure our own house is sin-free.
Posted 28 Mar 2012 at 11:25 am ¶p.s. Someone needs to remind folks that you are not likely to win many races if you are also competing for the Darwin Award.
Posted 28 Mar 2012 at 11:50 am ¶Good article. Entitlement is the antithesis of sharing, which is ideally what road use is all about. I think I confuse a lot of people… I’m a spandex wearer with snazzy cycling shoes who sometimes manages to go fast and my commuter looks kind of like a road/race bike but has fenders and small panniers. I obey the rules of the road. Did I mention it is a fixed gear? I think I have effectively managed to embody all cycling stereotypes at once.
Posted 28 Mar 2012 at 2:20 pm ¶I’ve ridden with my dad and his biking buddies a few times, and while they wear the biker gear, they seemed pretty good about traffic laws (albeit on rural roads).
Posted 28 Mar 2012 at 4:48 pm ¶Oh, by the way, I invoked your name (and your blog) on a recent comment thread on KSPR’s Facebook page. Here’s the post. https://www.facebook.com/KSPRNews/posts/391395547550973 I was pretty disturbed that there was a consensus among commenters that Springfield isn’t bike-friendly.
As I rode home and watched all the people driving while on their cell phones, and thought about the sheer number of people I have seen texting and yacking while driving in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, both of which have laws against it, I wondered if the cyclists in the movie above have any more hubris than motorists. Motorists routinely violate law and common sense. Perhaps not as visibly, but certainly as flagrantly.
Thats not an excuse, just a realization that cyclists and motorists are not genetically different. They learn that hubris through trial, error, and experience. And just as those cyclists are probably shocked to have suffered the consequences of their actions, so too do motorists, seemingly surprised by “accidents” clearly linked to negligence.
Posted 28 Mar 2012 at 6:31 pm ¶One wonders what people are thinking to put such things about themselves such as this on YouTube. That may be the real hubris.
Posted 28 Mar 2012 at 7:42 pm ¶LMAO, Steve. I too wonder why people put videos of themselves behaving stupidly on the WWW.
Posted 28 Mar 2012 at 8:23 pm ¶Great commentary everyone! Thanks.
I truly dislike dividing the bicycling world this way, but there ARE differences — and hybrids
I have a story to tell today about scofflaw car drivers. Man, I nearly ate grill this morning
Posted 29 Mar 2012 at 5:52 am ¶“I have a story to tell today about scofflaw car drivers.”
Oh, don’t get me started on that subject. I can rant all day about that.
Posted 29 Mar 2012 at 6:21 am ¶Egads. Glad you lived to tell us the story, Andy. I’ve always tried to avoid the Buick Bar and Grille.
And thanks for “outing” that elephant in the room. The sport bike community really does need to shitcan some of that hubris, or better yet, save it up till the numbers are pinned on and the course is closed.
Posted 29 Mar 2012 at 6:55 am ¶I agree with your point that it is safe and easy to follow traffic laws, and counterproductive for sports cyclists to object to motorists who want to go straight on green lights.
I have to disagree with comments about not wanting to go fast. I may not be interested in racing or have any bicycles without racks, but I do want to be able to commute at full speed. I’ve heard too many planners and advocates defending door zone bike lanes as safe for “reasonable” bicycle speeds, and wanting bicyclists to use facilities at reduced speed even motor traffic can only go 10-20mph. I do want to go faster than walking my bike in the door zone.
My observation fits Keri’s experience. In Philadelphia the bicyclists I see using the bike lanes rarely wait at lights and ride in the door zone even where there are no bike lanes. I find riding in the traffic lane is actually faster – the higher speed possible in the traffic lane more than offsets the time spent waiting at lights.
Posted 29 Mar 2012 at 9:48 pm ¶I do not see this as a sport vs transport cycling issue at all. There are just as many videos out there of commuters and messengers running stop signs, of beskirted women riding against traffic, and so on.
In Boston, the roadies that ride for local teams or with local clubs are actually more likely to be law abiding than most transportation cyclists. The local cycling clubs give very strict lectures to their members about how one should behave on the road as a representative of the club. Transportation cyclists, on the other hand, mostly seem to interpret stop signs and traffic lights as optional, and it frustrates me to no end.
Bottom line: There are people, no matter what kind of cyclist they are, who behave foolishly. There is no need to malign cycling as a sport just because some people behave foolishly.
Posted 30 Mar 2012 at 8:50 am ¶Angelo makes a good point that may have been overlooked. Not all commuters will be riding at European “Gazelle Bicycle” speeds. American cities are often decentralized rather than compact. Assuming a cyclist has to be wearing his work clothes and riding at a speed low enough to avoid cardiovascular exertion (i.e., sweat), we may actually discourage a lot of riders who may live far enough away from work such that the easy style of cycling simply is not time-effective.
I hate going back to my own experience, since I am probably about 3.5 standard deviations from the “design bicyclist” being discussed by urban planners. I started commuting by bike in earnest in 1979. My commute distances since then have been 12, 6, 1.5,3,11, and 5 miles. The longer ones have been quite manageable because I ride at a quite fast clip. Traditional bicycling commute distances in Europe, I understand, are quite short due to their historical development patterns. Commuting by bicycle in the US, for many of us, requires thinking in a different paradigm.
But even those laid back Europeans realize cyclists need some speed. The Alta Planning paper on Dutch cycletracks claims they have a design speed of about 18.5 mph, which isn’t too bad, but still slower than some fit cyclists could maintain on the flats under optimal conditions. I would say most of us could live with 20 mph design speeds in urban areas. Wish the motorists could….
http://www.altaplanning.com/App_Content/files/pres_stud_docs/Cycle%20Track%20lessons%20learned.pdf
Posted 30 Mar 2012 at 8:58 am ¶I think the real problem many people have with the behavior on display in this video is the attitude of the cyclists, who seem to believe that the driver is doing something wrong and that they have the right to just speed through the intersection.
This is very different from the usual attitude of scofflaw cyclists and motorists who break laws because they think it’s not harming anyone and because they think they can get away with it – i.e. as opportunists. These folks in this video seem to actually believe the law doesn’t apply to them.
Posted 30 Mar 2012 at 9:57 am ¶This is an interesting thread but I’m inclined to think it doesn’t need to just focus on the behavior of this particular type of cyclist.
Posted 31 Mar 2012 at 3:32 pm ¶Based on my observations since I got a job transfer and emigrated to the U.S. from England in early 1977, poor adherence to traffic law is common among cyclists of all types and ages. In fact, I recall learning with surprise from several sources that wrong-way cycling was actually recommended to children for safety reasons by all sorts of authority figures: parents, police, and school principals.
I never saw any wrong-way cycling while I lived in England, and as a child cycling with friends we always obeyed traffic rules and never thought to do otherwise. On occasional trips back to England since I’ve observed the same kind of bad behavior as is common in the U.S. though, such as wrong-way riding and cycling on the sidewalk. (My sister-in-law did the latter when I visited with my bike in 2003!)
As to the difference between European and American cycling conditions, in urban situations I don’t necessarily see that much difference. My commute to work in England when I started cycling was around 3-4 miles. (I didn’t have an odometer so I can’t say for sure.) My work commutes since I’ve been in the U.S. have been about 1.5 miles and 3.5-4 miles to the two jobs I’ve had here. To get to the downtown area from my home is barely 1.5 miles.
Things are definitely more spread out in the U.S., certainly in metro St. Louis, even in older urban areas, but a bicycle remains a practical option, at least for some trips, and especially for the work commute if you choose to live within bicycling distance of work, as I’ve done since moving to America.
Martin… It’s not a matter a bicycling type by individual. I’m talking cultural hegemony. The fact of the matter is that sport cycling rules the entire U.S. bicycling culture.
Posted 31 Mar 2012 at 10:54 pm ¶A Marxist analysis of bicycling culture, per Gramsci? Ok. As an expatriate academic, I’ll listen…this is actually one of the parts of the university culture I miss down here in BombTown.
To be sure, anyone who examines bicycling culture in the U.S. will see it is dominated by sport cycling, i.e., the Bicycling mentality. Except, perhaps in places like NYC where the hipsters and urban cyclists share the limelight. The backlash against cycling, although it usually is directed at things like bike path takings, often uses the lycra-clad cyclist ad hominem attack as a starting point.
But I might actually buy into this essay as it is written.
Posted 01 Apr 2012 at 5:58 pm ¶Khal…
Posted 02 Apr 2012 at 9:35 am ¶