A (rather long) essay reflecting on the book Fighting Traffic by Peter D. Norton (MIT Press, 2008)
The street is an extremely important symbol because your whole enculturation experience is geared around keeping you out of the street. “Just remember: Look left, look right, look left again… No ball games… Don’t talk to strangers… Keep out of the road.” The idea is to keep everyone indoors. So, when you come to challenge the powers that be, inevitably you find yourself on the curbstone of indifference, wondering “should I play it safe and stay on the sidewalks, or should I go into the street?” And it is the ones who are taking the most risks that will ultimately effect the change in society.
The car system steals the street from under us and sells it back for the price of gasoline. It privileges time over space, corrupting and reducing both to an obsession with speed or, in economic lingo, “turnover.” It doesn’t matter who “drives” this system, for its movements are already pre-determined.
– from the website of the (now defunct) London advocacy group “Take Back the Streets”
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Imagine you are a member of the majority, and a powerful minority has managed to get the laws changed in such a way as to significantly curtail one of your essential liberties. What’s more, they then proceeded to abuse your remaining rights and make your life miserable. As a result, a couple decades later, your majority has become a minority.
There’s no need to imagine. This is what happened to pedestrians (and to a lesser extent bicyclists) in these United States in the 1920s.
This story at MSNBC illustrates how many in the media have a huge blind spot — or in keeping with my title theme, are tone deaf — regarding traffic crashes.
This story made the news of course because bystanders did nothing, but it ignores the more common problem.
The subtitle reads:
“He was mostly ignored by witnesses after accident in Conn.”
Down the page a few paragraphs is this quote from the son of the crash victim:
“You know people keep calling it an accident,” Arce said Tuesday. “It was not an accident. It was a crime.”
And he is absolutely right. The motorists were passing illegally, and neither of them stopped. This crash was not an “accident.” It was a crime even if the drivers hadn’t fled the scene.
I try not to think conspiratorially; I don’t think the subhead is intentionally misleading. They’re just fully immersed in the automotive culture. The “real crimes” in their eyes seems to be that the drivers left the scene and the bystanders did nothing. But as for the wrong-way driving resulting in the striking of an elderly man? “Hey. Stuff happens. What can we say?”
A common concern among cyclists and law enforcement is whether or not cyclists are illegally impeding other roadway users (motorists).
Many officers and motorists question a cyclists’ statutory ability to command a lane or drive two-abreast by quoting (or claiming to) the impeding traffic statute.
But some have not read it very carefully.
Here is how it actually reads in Florida statutes:
316.183 Unlawful speed.(5) No person shall drive a motor vehicle at such a slow speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic, except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or in compliance with law.
Notice that is reads “drive a motor vehicle;” not “drive a vehicle.” And while a bicycle is certainly a vehicle, it is not a motor vehicle, so this statute does not apply to bicyclists. If it did it would be blatantly discriminatory. It would mean that bicyclists would not be able to drive defensively by commanding a lane and must place their safety solely into the hands of motorists. It would also discriminate against horse-drawn wagons and carriages, which are still permitted on roadways. Unlike bicyclists, they cannot share a lane with motor vehicles unless the lane is exceptionally wide. Read more »
A break from the mundane. Such exceptionally amazing cycling skills. When I was in my teens we didn’t have bikes that would have enabled us to attempt such feats. The few attempts I made at airtime resulted in stressed frames, loose headsets, and more than a few sore body parts.
