A lot gets made of the cyclist vs. driver civil war that has been waged. It seems like every month there's another magazine that puts out another list ranking it's 10-50 most bike friendly cities. Having lived and ridden in two cities that are generally pretty high on those lists and in one that doesn't I feel like with pretty good authority I can say that the general motorist in Portland is no friendlier to me as a cyclist than your average metro-DC driver. You might find that odd because of all the articles you read about how Portland is nothing but a series of bike lanes connecting one side of town to the other, and while that's true, so is DC. No matter how many bike lanes a city builds, the motorist who is forced to cautiously pass a cyclist, thus forcing them to slow down from whatever speed they were traveling, is going to be annoyed. That's just how it is. Portland is the owner of great statistics like 6% of their residents commute to work by bicycle and they won't build a mile of road without building a mile of bike path/lane. Those are great and all, but that's still 94% of people who use some sort of motor to get to work and would prefer their tax dollars go to something else besides infrastructure that slows down their motorized commute.
By now I'm sure that everyone is aware of the Tony Kornheiser rant. If you're not, allow me to recap without bothering to look for a link or even linking you to my own discussion of said rant on this blog. Kornheiser, annoyed by a new set of bike lanes that have been proposed, suggested that motorists just run bikes down. "Give them a little bump" is a much better paraphrase. Then the all mighty Lance Armstrong got wind of it, called Mr. Tony and they had a dialogue. Mr. Tony apologized and then Levi Leipheimer tweeted something that he thought made him sound tough saying he'd never heard of Tony Kornheiser. Got news for your Levi, he's never heard of you either. But I digress. I bring up this point because it's just one more example of how in today's world of where people want to be eco friendly and "green up their lives," there's still an on going battle for the right to the road between cars and people on bikes. I don't think it's going to go away, but there's a lot more positive thinking people out there than me looking to do anything to make even the smallest difference.
That brings me to my point, sort of. Somehow, and this is beyond me because I haven't been a subscriber to Bicycling magazine in about five years, I have ended up on their email distribution list. So, about once a week I am treated to the same electronic articles that convinced me to stop paying for their print version. Any one who can competently show up and not get yelled at on your fast local group ride will have a hard time finding any article in Bicycling magazine that is either useful or interesting. I feel the same way about Runner's World and Triathlete, but that's another topic for another day. The subject line of these emails is always the headline of the most important article and today's really caught my attention, "How to Drive Around Cyclists." I'm obviously a cynic but they really paid someone to write this and then paid another person to put it into a online friendly format with graphics they basically stole out of a 15 year old's drivers ed manual.
Please, take a second an flip through, but don't spend too much time, there's nothing in there worth reading. Maybe, even though I'm a cynic, I give people too much credit because the biggest problem I have with this is the entire 16 page/point article can be summed up in 1, "Use common sense." Maybe most people don't have common sense? Maybe that's a portion of brain activity that goes completely blank when they see an odd two wheeled person in front of them on the road. They point out all these factors like, the two second rule, the 3 feet rule, slow passing makes for safe passing (which I'm not sure I agree with), etc. These are things you teach to a 15 year old who is going to take a driver's test and by the time they are 16 and two weeks will have forgotten it all to simply let the common sense of driving take over. Having moved from VA to CA to OR and now back I have taken all three states written driver's tests. I am a really good driver. I've never been in an accident that was my fault and I haven't been stopped for speeding in over 4 years. Still, it took me two tries at the CA test to pass and I only passed the OR test on the first try by one point. The score on that test has no correlation with one's ability to drive a car. It has a direct correlation with one's ability to memorize a bunch of crap that happens less than 1% of the time when you're behind the wheel.
Regardless, isn't this little electronic pamphlet directed to the wrong crowd? Ostensibly the people reading it are the people on the bikes and when they are in their cars they're probably not the ones laying on the horn when there's traffic an a cyclist is keeping them from getting to the next stop sign two seconds sooner. I suppose it's a great effort to produce some sort of little manual on the 15 most important tips for not killing a cyclist, but shouldn't it be distributed to the drivers? There's a reason that Martin Luther nailed The Ninety-Five Thesis to the church door and didn't just distribute it at his underground meeting. It's safe to say that Martin Luther does not work at Bicycling magazine.
I think my point, if I'm making one at all, is that it doesn't matter where you live, how many bike lanes or multi-use trails you have access to, at some point, you have to ride in the road and chances are both you and the cars sharing that space, wish the other wasn't there. The driver doesn't need a lesson on how to get around the cyclist just like the cyclist doesn't need a lesson on how to let the driver's by, though sometimes, neither of these are true statements. But that's life. There will be cars and there will be bikes and as long as you don't hit me I won't throw my water bottle at you. I think that's a pretty fair compromise.
No comments:
Post a Comment