by a cyclist
As a cyclist one, often has comments yelled out of the windows of passing -- or passed -- cars. One example: (6/8/07) one would have thought if this was going to be the case it would be on Plainfield Ave at three minutes to five PM, when I was avoiding rush hour traffic by riding between the left and right lanes, only a few inches between me and the cars that were essentially parked on each side.
Of course, human nature being what it is, this wasn't the case. Those drivers, whose desire to voice frustration at being stuck in their $30,000 cars while a guy on a junk fixed gear with one speed passed them, would be perfectly understandable, would have been more than justified in exclaiming something about their situation. However, they were in decent spirits, or maybe just too frustrated to yell as I passed them or too bent on getting where they were going -- an admittedly lost cause (indeed, the tractor trailor carrying cars, one of the vehicles stuck in the road, never caught up with me before I turned off onto the overpass to go over Rt. 22). Rather, the shout of the day from a driver came as I was returning from the bike shop in Scotch Plains.
As I turned onto my own block, a few hundred feet from my driveway, a driver in a silver or beige Ford Excursion yelled out his window challenging my sexuality. I love those kinds of comments from drivers, because they usually eminate from the operators of large trucks who appear to the outward observer to be compensating for some deficiency in size elsewhere, or who, at the very least, can be said, quite reasonably, to be hiding behind their metal carapace, especially when compared to a guy on a single speed bike riding in traffic on a 90-plus degree day with high humidty. The driver is shielded from other cars and the elements -- the cyclist is exposed to heat, rain, bugs, humidity, and road rash and broken bones. The first thing that comes to mind is to wonder if the driver would come out of his car and say that. Doubtful. Like phone sex lines, mail order books and YouTube, the automobile in enabling: it allows the user a degree of secrecy, making him faceless, and it's construction -- akin to a large square knight's suit of armor, or those huge robotic things they encase deep-sea salvage divers in -- allows some degree of protection while at the same time making the driver more substantial than he would be on foot. In a car or truck, a hundred and eighty-five pound person becomes a two ton, hundred and eighty-five pound person -- behind tinted glass.
The armor factor is another aspect of it. The driver can make a mistake and walk away counting his insurence settlement; a slip-up for the cyclist can easily mean injury or, less common but still possible, death, and not a very pleasant one, either. Not that any sort of demise is pleasant to contemplate, but getting creamed by a Chevy or liquified by a Lexis are certainly near the top of the "more unpleasant" list in Saint Peter's notebook, I'm sure.
That said, one has to wonder about such unprovoked comments from drivers. Generally, verbal interaction between drivers and cyclists of a negative nature falls into two catagories: Words passed after one party does, or is perceived as doing, something wrong -- and words passed by one party as the other one rides or drives along minding their own business. While some cyclists are rowdy with drivers (certain notorious critical mass rides come to mind as the scenes of bicyclists insulting drivers out of hand and looking for trouble) most of these comments are from drivers, at bikes, not vice versa. Again, except for the few rowdy critical mass riders, how many bikers randomly shout at drivers "get a bike!"? But now how many times do drivers shout "Get a car" -- the joke being many cyclists do have cars, but choose not to use them on certain days. Again, these comments fall into several catagories.
The first are comments that attack the nature of the cyclist's vehicle. "Get a car", "get off the road", "why aren't you on/get on the sidewalk," etc. are all commonly heard comments yelled by drivers at cyclists. The comments are pretty straightforward int hat the only thing they portray is the the driver's misunderstanding of / intolerance of, cycling: The driver is mistaken in thinking that the roads are only for cars, he thinks sidewalks, which are for walking, are meant for bicycle traffic, etcetera. And these misunderstandings are voiced by drivers because they not only misunderstnad cycling, but are intolerant of it. The misunderstanding explains their specific comments and or problems, but the fact that they choose to voice them is evidence of their antagonism towards cyclists. They not only misunderstand cycling -- they don't want to share the roads with those who DO understand it.
The second catagory is comments regasrding a misunderstanding of road position -- drivers yelling at a cyclist "get over", "you're in my lane," etcetera. This doesn't necessarily mean the driver has a problem with cyclists, but it does mean he doesn't understand cycling in terms of where it is safe and proper to ride. A lot of non-cyclists think bikes belong off the usable road surface -- meaning int he gutter. The gutter is dangerous for several reasons -- first, it's filled with debris and second, it is so much further right that it is harder for the cyclist to be seen by drivers even if they are looking -- and they usually are not. In reality the safest place to ride is between the gutter and the edge of the right lane, i.e., the shoulder.
And lastly, the third main catagory of driver comments are those directed at cyclists because they are on bikes, but not mentioning anything about cycling. Rather, they attack the rider's manhood. Again, these are the most amusing because they most often eminate fromt he drivers of large SUVs or trucks, who, if nothing else, are well enough protected that it allows them to feel safe enough to insult total strangers for no reason, when if asked, they might regard anyway who rides in traffic, or in January, or in June, as deranged, perhaps responding to questions about whether or not they would ride with "that's insane -- you can be killed", or "it's too hot/cold" etcetera.
But, is it "for no reason"? That phrase is often misused, a lot of times when people say something happens "for no reason" it simply means the reason is not readily observed. In this case, the cyclists is certainly doing nothing to bother the driver, and has offered the driver no reason to believe he is, to use one common insult of this third catagory, "queer" or "fag" -- which is particularly amusing because it is, of course, factually incorrect and just plain out of left field on the driver's part. So what motivates the drivers to utter such nonsense?
One could lay the blame on the fact that cyclists on the road often wear tight-fittign shorts. Mayhap that is true, but they don't wear them because of any sexual misanthropy, they wear them because they can be much more comfortable on longer rides. and, to be fair, football players typically we3ar tight-fitting knickers. How many times do you see SUV drivers motor past a college football practice and shout the same insults? No, the function-over-fashion aspect fo road cycling clothing is hardly to blame. Many other sports involve odd-looking clothes. What then explains this nonsense?
In psychology, there is a concept called projection, which is very simple: A person with a problem, not wanting to face it, projects it onto others, so that, for example, a dishonest man may accuse others of lying, or a man who had an affair may constantly suspect his wife of infidelity, and so forth.
In the case of the drivers, projection -- with the help of our "car culture's" definitions of norms -- is the only real explanation that makes sense. The driver of the truck -- say, Mr. Expedition -- is told by our "car culture" that it is macho and "normal" to drive a big huge truck -- whether or not one needs it, or might actually enjoy another vehicle, if he only tried something else.
Our culture also associates an imposing motor vehicle with success, importance, and all around good stuff, and with trucks, this has become particularly refined to focus on "brute" image: One infamous Dodge truck add opined that the truck it was selling had the "most intimidating" front grille of any vehicle in its class. That says it all. Nothing puts the finger on the pulse of the public's mental state like advertising -- it's based on psychology, and not psycho-babble nonsense, but an understanding of human nature that works. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it's why capitalism functions in a consumer-oriented society.
The driver combines this with his own reaction to the idea of cycling in the heat, or cold, or with cars six inches from his cranium -- he would never ride in summer, or winter, or on main roads doing the dance of death with cars -- and thinks anyone who would is a little nuts.
The cyclist, to the driver, then embodies the antithesis of what he is told is normal, macho, manly and somethign to strive towards -- the cyclists vehicle has no motor, weighs next to nothing, doesn't have an "intimidating grille" -- in fact, it has no grille -- and exposes the cyclist to the elements and to the risk of death should he crash or be hit by another vehicle. The driver therefore simultaneously regards the cyclist as less than he is -- he's lacking the virtues aspired to by our car culture -- and yet, knows in the back of his mind, at least unconsciously, that the cyclist is risking life and limb and expending tremendous physical effort, whereas all he has to do, within his big truck, is move his foot and tap a gas pedal, protects by several tons of steel and climate controlled air to make sure he isn't too hot or too warm. This knowledge can be seen when you ask a driver if they'd ride on a main road, or in inclimate weather -- they look at you like you are suggesting they jump off a bridge, most of the time.
The drivers then face an unreconcilable conflict: on one hand, their value system, provided by our "car culture" tells them the cyclists are sub-standard: On the other hand, the cyclists are exercising more bravery, endurance, and will than the drivers ever could from within their metal cages. The driver is then forced to look at this guy, who society tells him is a wimp because he isn't hidden inside a three-ton truck -- who is exercising what to the driver appears to be superhuman abilities, pitting his own body against the sheetmetal skin and steel frames of cars in the flow of traffic.
The result is that the driver is in a situation he can't solve internally -- a contradiction between his conceptual level awareness -- his values, the "car culture" -- and his perceptual level awareness, namely, what he sees out his windshield. The result is that the drivers often lash out at the cyclist, who is braving the streets and risking death, calling him a wimp, or a queer, or some other name implying questionable sexuality -- not because of any indication the cyclist has shown of this, but because the driver is told the cyclist is such, by our car culture -- and yet, he secretly knows, if he'd stop to think, that the cyclist is taking a bigger risk than he ever does, at least within a Ford Excursion.
Cyclists should take heart from such comments -- they are absurd, and as annoying as they are, bear no relationship to reality. What they spring from is the driver's own conflicted mental state. While shouting insults from behind the wheel of a two-ton vehicle could and probably should be considered making threats, the fact is not so much that the driver is threatenign the cyclist from inside his auto (although he could be) as that the driver feels threatened by the cyclist. This goes back to our "car culture" -- most people feel, especially in the suburbs, outside fo the city and away from subways and buses, that you absolutely need a car to survive on a daily basis. Well, while it's true that no one is likely to carry a pool table home on their back riding a bike, it's a fact that cycling is practical for transport. It is always fun to see the reaction of non-cyclists when you explain that you can travel X number to miles to such-and-such a place faster by bike. They cannot comprehend it.
The shouts of such unfortunate souls show that, at least at some level, deeply buried, the driver knows the cyclist is not the wimp, but rather, that within that two ton truck, protected from the world, he is.
go ...
