Biking Rules

My wife is a dependable reality check about biking. (She doesn't bike, owing to a host of athletic injuries from her youth.) She listened last night to what I had to say about the discord between bikers and drivers, and offered her perspective as a driver contending with unpredictable and frequently reckless bikers:

They drive me crazy!

More specifically, she said she really, really doesn't want to be party to injuring

a biker. But when a biker does something reckless like run a red light or ride at night without lights or reflectors, or swerve into traffic without warning, she feels helplessly entangled in the biker's lack of self-preservation. Why should she and her car be an unwilling player in someone's suicidal recklessness?

She had a point. But.

I offered a counter-perspective: why should the bikers (like me) who signal, stop at lights, ride predictably, and use lights and reflectors at night pay the price of drivers' rage at reckless bikers? Do you generalize from bad driver behavior to all other drivers? Why should any driver assume that all bikers are just as reckless as the worst of them?

This is where the conversation got interesting. She had an answer. A good one:

Drivers don't know or understand safe biking principles. Example: taking the lane. She's heard me explain it, but the last time she biked, the wisdom was always: keep to the right. She can see the sense in taking the lane, but can't get over the sense of anxiety that would prevent her from trying it if she biked, so when she sees a biker do it, she feels a twinge of that anxiety.

So if the spouse of a vehicular cyclist doesn't quite "get it," where does that leave the rest of the driving population? Taking the lane just looks like yet another reckless biker maneuver, like running a red light.

Education, stat!

Bike organizations need to do three things in order to help drivers distinguish between safe and unsafe biking:

1. Call out risky behavior for what it is: foolish. Running red lights at full speed, swerving, riding on the wrong side of the street, riding at night without lights... These are just foolish, immature, self-centered, and entitled behaviors that put all bikers at risk: drivers are likely to generalize their sense of what's reckless from these genuinely risky behaviors to other practices (e.g., taking the lane, keeping a safe distance from the road edge) that are actually safe. We really, really don't want safe biking practices driving drivers crazy. Idea: when you're on your bike and see someone run a red light at speed, yell, as a friendly reminder, "Hey! You ran a red light!" It might not influence that biker much, but if many of us start doing it we might accomplish two things: a) let reckless bikers know that if they're reckless, they're losing respect of other bikers, and b) let drivers know that we're not a monolithically reckless group. There are safe practices and unsafe practices.

2. Educate both bikers and drivers about safe and unsafe biking: e.g., Just as it is safe to wait at a red light and wear a helmet, it is safe to 'take the lane' and keep some distance from road-edge hazards. Idea: Pamphlets for the RMV, police departments, driver-education courses, and PTA groups.

3. Demand better enforcement of traffic laws both for bikers and drivers. This will involve partnerships with (not antagonism of) police departments. Idea: bike organizations, even ones with a modest budget, could offer to cover the expense of a safety officer becoming a League of American Bicyclists certified League Bicycling Instructor. In addition to ensuring best practices in teaching children how to ride, the certification will inevitably lead to a police force more aware of safe biking practices. (And maybe I won't get scolded by a cop for biking in traffic when I need to move left for a left turn.)

As more bikes take to the streets, we need to help drivers do what they want to do: not hit and injure bikers. If we write this task as a small one (by addressing only individual biker or driver behaviors), there will be a lot of drivers who don't understand the big change happening on our streets. We need to write the task as a big one: changing the nature of the biker-driver relationship.

If that means exchanging biker solidarity for safe biker/driver solidarity, so be it.

My wife's next point was about licenses for bikers. One step at a time, I said. One step at a time.