Many of Reed’s fellow cyclists are criticizing him for not using the paved shoulder, even though Texas law does not require it, and also permits cyclists full use of a lane that is too narrow to share.

If Reed was riding on a roadway with a shared use path next to it in a state that has a mandatory sidepath law, many, if not most of you would support him, even though some of you might prefer to ride on the path.  Most non-cyclists however, would not understand why he wasn’t using the “bike path” because riding on the road is “so dangerous.”

If he was riding on a roadway with a narrow paved shoulder or bike lane that was full of debris and was staying out of that shoulder or bike lane, once again, many or most of you would support him, even though you might use the shoulder or bike lane.   Most non-cyclists however, would not understand why he wasn’t using the “bike path” because riding on the road is “so dangerous.”

If he was riding on a roadway without a paved shoulder, bike lane or sidepath and controlling the lane, many or most of you would support him, even though you might hug the edge.  Most non-cyclists however, would not understand why he was on the road at all, because riding on the road is “so dangerous.”

From the sound of how the Ennis police and Ellis County sheriff’s departments are behaving, I think they could have just as easily cited, jailed and convicted Reed for any of those types of circumstances, because they believe — in spite of a complete lack of evidence — that roadway cycling is dangerous and causes delay and chaos on our roads.

When I was pulled over for controlling a narrow lane in the City of Orlando, I heard the same kind of absurd and ignorant arguments from the cop who pulled me over.  Fortunately, there was no bike lane or paved shoulder present, and I was able to talk my way out of it.  Last week an off-duty sheriff’s deputy told me to get on the sidewalk.  Many will say, “Well that’s different,” but it’s really not; all of these police actions stem from the same bogus belief, not from their understanding of the law.

The real problem we face is not so much how our laws are written, but what people believe about cycling.  When we cyclists criticize Reed for cycling in the way he does, we are reinforcing the belief that roadway cycling is dangerous, and therefor irresponsible.

******************

A note about impeding traffic.  I looked up the traffic counts for the road Reed’s been using at the Texas Department of Transportation website.  It gets about 18,000 cars per day; rather low for a four-lane highway.  Reed’s first arrest happened at about 2:30 p.m., which is well “off-peak.”  Using standard traffic planning estimates, I’d guess the road was seeing roughly 3 to 4 cars per minute per lane, or one car passing ever 15 to 20 seconds.  How can one possibly think changing lanes to pass a cyclist is any sort of problem in such a situation?  By comparison, the street I ride to work during rush hour is a 3-lane one-way.  Each lane sees about 12 to 13 cars per minute, or one every 5 seconds (of course they actually come in platoons).  But even with much heavier traffic, motorists rarely have to wait more than a few seconds to pass me, and most don’t have to wait at all; they see me early and change lanes.

“Of course we have a deal. They get out of the way of our cars, we look the other way on the statue defecation.”

- George Costanza and Jerry Seinfeld

The tyranny of speed rules over nearly every road in this great nation.  Florida is perhaps the tyrant’s most resolute stronghold.  It’s as if gravity or latitude or the warm climate (or perhaps the convergence of the three) have funneled that power into our peninsula from all across the land.  Hemmed in by the Everglades, the tyrant’s power concentrates even more as one moves into Broward and Miami-Dade counties.  It then squirts out along US 1, the Overseas Highway that runs from Key Largo to Key West.  The Highway is now mostly overwhelmed by the tyrant; its miles of ugly strip commercial development making it look like nearly any other four-lane highway.  If it weren’t for the palms and tropically-themed signs you might think you were outside Atlanta along some stretches.

N. Roosevelt: sidepath on the left side; destinations on the right.

One-hundred and two miles down the highway you enter the Conch Republic, aka Key West.  It’s the end of the road.  The tyranny of speed has pushed its invading wedge westward into the island along US 1, and its commercial minions — fast-food purveyors, big box retailers… — have come in behind to claim territory.  At its ironic intersection with Eisenhower Drive, it loses nearly all its power as it changes names from N. Roosevelt Boulevard to Truman Avenue and becomes a narrow, two-lane street.

Most of the tyrant’s soldiers relax and drop their weapons when entering this human-paced paradise, but enough keep their warrior mentalities to make trouble as they scatter throughout the fine grid of narrow streets.  The saner ones leave their cars at their hotels as they visit, or even sell them if they decide to stay and put down roots.

The End of the Road. Welcome to human-scale.

The tyrant’s soldiers have a deal with the pigeon cyclists of Key West; the cyclists scatter out of the way of their cars, the tyrants look the other way when cyclists run red lights or ride with a beer in one hand.

I traveled to Key West over the first weekend of December with Keri Caffrey and John Schubert.  As we biked around the island we found ourselves running afoul of their pigeon-deal.  Not accustom to getting out of the way, we annoyed quite a few of the soldiers, and they made threatening motions with their weapons.  The problem became severe as we traveled N. Roosevelt; no doubt the leading edge of an army is where the fighting is the bloodiest.  The tyrant had provided the pigeons with a place to keep out of the way; something called a “bike path.”  The path was pleasant enough as it followed the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, but on some stretches the commercial minions had build driveways across it, and the soldiers were not terribly polite about yielding at those crossings.  At the very first driveway we were nearly taken out by one.

Our purpose that weekend was to introduce some key Conchs to the principles and practices of vehicular cycling.  In that we feel we were quite successful; all who attended our course said they saw real value in it.  The larger challenge for Key West though, is getting local motorists to accept vehicular cycling.

Conchs in Training

The local cyclists may feel the current situation is pretty good.  After all, bicycling makes up a far greater proportion of traffic on Key West than in perhaps any city in the nation outside of Davis, CA.  Eddie Marsh, proprietor of a pedicab and bike rental business, told us the tourists who rent bikes for a week usually return reporting that they had a great time.  But I wonder how many crashes are caused by their relatively new door-zone bike lanes and their sidepaths.  It’s common for untrained and inexperienced cyclists to be unaware of the conflicts posed by such facilities, and see only the “benefit” of “having a place to ride.”

I’ve been traveling to Key West since 1982.  During that first visit I noticed how some motorists were easily aggravated.  The juxtaposition of aggressive driving and the “mañana” mentality was surprising.   But it was still a fairly sleepy island at that time.  In ’85 I rode the Old Town section of the island with a friend and it was roughly the same.  My next visit in 1994 was as a budding bicycle transportation professional, spending a week observing and analyzing conditions and behaviors for an FDOT-led project.  Locals were increasingly concerned that cycling was becoming dangerous on the island, but many of our team routinely rode the N. Roosevelt roadway with no grief from the soldiers.  In 1998 I went down there for a Florida Bicycle Association advocacy-building effort.  The attitude from the locals was much the same as in ’94; “it’s a dangerous place; we need more bikeways,” yet I still saw it as a fairly easy place to ride.

Now, a decade later, they have those bikeways they asked for, and my perception of the island is that motorist attitudes towards cyclists are worse than they’d ever been.  Motor traffic levels are much higher (especially on N. Roosevelt) and motorists are much more intolerant of roadway cycling.  (So much for the theory that increasing the amount of cycling improves motorist attitudes towards cyclists.)  On the other hand, the locals we spoke to think things are pretty hunky-dory.  It’s so rare for American cyclists to say they live in a good place for cycling; one needs to respect that, so I question my own perspective.

When I visited in 1994 the cyclist crashes we were hearing about had little to do with the lack of bikeways; they were mostly instances of cyclists not yielding or otherwise violating the rules of the road.  I wonder what the causes are today.  Has safety actually improved along with its perception?  Nothing I saw this year would lead me to expect objective improvement.  But without actual data that’s just conjecture.

It’s an important question.  I hope someone can provide answers.  Because if Key West is perceived as a success while actual safety has been degraded, it becomes yet another misleading example in support of misguided planning and design.

The sad irony in this story is that Key West prides itself on tolerance.   “One Human Family” is the official city motto.  The mayor wrote that this motto “reflects our commitment to living together as caring, sharing neighbors dedicated to making our home as close to ‘paradise’ as we can.”  The city is known for accepting and welcoming those who wish to live differently from the norm.  Such tolerance does not, however, appear to extend to those of us on bicycles who behave as equals on their streets.  You can flaunt your sexual orientation or your outrageous artistic sensibilities, or wear a t-shirt that would get you thrown out of your mother’s house…but drive your bicycle like you’re a first-class citizen?  Now you’ve crossed the line, bud.

My wife, who was believer when we met, expressed a similar sentiment about my agnosticism.

Respect for honest doubt would go a long way towards mending the huge rifts among the two main bicycling “camps.”

Bikeway proponents must respect the doubts of vehicular cycling proponents about the benefits of facilities, because there is significant objective evidence to support that doubt.  Since decisions about bikeways are done by governments, objectivity is essential.

Vehicular cycling proponents must respect the doubt of others about the effectiveness of vehicular cycling.   While vehicular cycling can also be measured objectively, it is experienced subjectively.   There is significant subjective evidence to support that doubt; those many personal experiences in traffic which reinforce our culture’s taboo about cycling.   Since cycling itself is done by individuals, many of whom are not trained, comfortable with, or prone towards objectivity, we vehicular cycling proponents must take a softer, subjective approach.

Respect and caring are the foundation.

“Certainty divides us; doubt unites us.”
– Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Laughing Jesus

– Genesis, Squonk

A woman walks into a marketing and public relations firm and sits down to talk with their lead strategist.

“Our organization has a fun, safe and healthy activity we wish to promote, but we’re struggling to figure out the right approach,” she says.

The strategist thinks for a moment, then responds, “I recommend the approach bicycle advocates have been using for the past 20 years; reinforce the public’s fears about your activity.”

The woman is taken aback, pauses for a moment, then says, “Oh!  You had me going there for a moment!”

“What do you mean?” asks the strategist.

“Well, you were joking, right?…”

If only.

The Politics of Doom

Think about the things that keep people from bicycling these days.  Fear of traffic.  Fear of injury.  Of looking awkward.  Of the equipment.  Of being left behind.  Discomfort.

On what do most bicycle advocates focus?  Bike lanes, new laws, and helmets.  None of the three do much to reduce those fears, and to a significant extent they increase them.

Let’s start with helmets.  A little perspective would be nice.  According to the Florida Department of Health, three times as many pedestrians, three times as many motorcyclists, and ten times as many automobile passengers suffer brain injuries as bicyclists do each year.  Florida bicyclists suffer between 80 and 90 brain injuries per year.  We account for about six percent of traffic-related brain injuries, and three percent of all brain injuries.  European nations have very low helmet use, but much lower bicycle fatality rates than the USA and especially Florida.  But we act as if bicycling were the primary cause of brain injuries and berate people for not wearing helmets.

New laws.  “We’re special.  We deserve special protection.”  Some advocacy groups have either managed to or attempted to pass laws to increase penalties for motorists who kill or seriously injure “vulnerable users” such as bicyclists, pedestrians and motorcyclists.  Well “why?” one might ask.  Is the rationale for such a law, “We deserve special justice because we’re at such high risk?”  Once again the underlying message is, “Bicycling (and walking and motorcycling) is risky.”  While the laws usually cover all “vulnerable users,” it is bicyclists who take the prominent role in pushing them.

Imagine a wife who enters a courtroom to watch the case of a careless (not reckless) motorist who caused the death of her husband, who was in a car the defendant ran off the road.  The guilty driver gets a fine of a couple hundred dollars and a few points on his license for careless driving.  But the wife learns that in the previous case in that courtroom, a driver who killed some other woman’s husband who was on a bicycle was fined a couple thousand dollars, had his license suspended, and was required to do community service.  Should she feel it was fair because the other man was on a bicycle?  Now add into this picture the high percentage of bicyclists who run red lights and stop signs, drive at night without lights, or ride in large groups that sometimes back up traffic.  This group deserves special justice?

Bicycle lanes are sold as an essential safety strategy.  The problem with this strategy is that bike lanes can only affect about six to eight percent of crashes between motorists and cyclists; the ones involving overtaking motorists.  But since that is exactly the type of crash non-cyclists and novice cyclists fear most, we have a problem.  It’s just paint.  While many experienced cyclists feel bike lanes provide some improved passing separation, many non-cyclists reason that motorists can obviously just drive right over them.  So the next “logical” strategy is some sort of barrier separation between motorists and bicyclists.  Aside from the fact that such barrier-separated bikeways force cyclists and motorists into intersection conflicts (which account for about 90% of crashes), such facilities even further reinforce the belief that bicycling is risky.  The logical next step in reasoning for the uninformed and inexperienced is that only streets with barrier-separated bikeways are safe.  (I was right-hooked by a motorist on my one-and-only trip on St. Petersburg’s barrier-separated bikeway on 1st Avenue South.  It was the first time I’d been right-hooked in about 20 years.)

Both helmets and bike lanes offer some positives while simultaneously contributing to fear, and they don’t necessarily add to the fear level for everyone.  We just need to first realize how they add to fear, and weigh that against potential benefits.  Some new laws might be useful, but they must seen as fair by all.

Generally I see our culture’s beliefs about bicycling heading towards this:  Bicycling is…

A. Very risky, and requires head protection and physical separation from auto traffic in order to be made safe, and

B. Is done by a minority who believes they deserve special justice, even though they often violate the law.

The efforts of many advocacy groups are strengthening this belief.  Not only by focusing on bikeways, helmets and special laws, but by prominently featuring bicyclist deaths in their communications: covering the stories in newsletters; putting up “ghost bikes;” holding “Rides of Silence.”  Certainly we should honor our friends who have been killed on our roads, but let’s figure out a way of doing it that doesn’t reinforce the belief that cycling is exceptionally risky.

The Politics of Possibility

Because cycling is not very risky.  The average bicyclist – and this includes all those ones who ride in a less-than-competent manner – will travel about 4 million hours before experiencing a fatal crash.  That is equal to 456 years of non-stop cycling.  Cyclists who follow the basic rules of the road will travel significantly farther before a fatal crash.  But we focus way too much on these rare crashes, instead of on the hundreds of millions of miles cyclists travel every year without incident.

How exactly are these common strategies increasing cycling?

If my fictitious marketing strategist understood these numbers, he’d likely spin it like this:  “In spite of the fact that many bicyclists routinely violate the rules of the road such as traveling at night without lights and running red lights, and that motorists are often inattentive and careless, and that Florida’s bicyclists travel hundreds of millions of miles each year, only about 120 Florida bicyclists are killed each year.  It’s hard to imagine a safer activity, especially if you learn how to do it properly, which is easy to do.”

The strategy bicyclists have been using for too long is the same one used by most environmental organizations:

Scare people with stories of doom and gloom, and attempt to use the law to force governments and individuals to do things they don’t want to do.

It is the failed strategy Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger have described in their book Breakthrough: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility.  (And no, the authors are not right-wing ideologues; they are liberals who care deeply about the environment.)

Even when we do focus on the positive aspects of cycling, it is simply elaborating on what people already know: “biking is fun,” “it’s good for the environment,” “it’s good for your health,” “it saves you money.”  And we wonder, “Hey, why hasn’t everybody started biking already?  Let’s repeat those things louder!”  To which the masses reply: “Well, none of those things matter if you’re dead!”

The solution is to help people to see bicycling as safe and personally rewarding.  Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s alternative “politics of possibility” points us in the right direction.  It is based on five key experiences all people find rewarding: Flow, Service to Others, Self-Mastery, Belonging and Fulfillment.

Flow

Flow is of course inherent to cycling.  But the “flow” they are talking about involves challenge and mental engagement.  Truly enjoyable flow requires just enough challenge to be interesting, but not overwhelming.  Vehicular cycling in urban traffic fits this perfectly.  We also need to apply flow to our education programs.  They are often too classroom- and lecture-oriented, and don’t spend enough time on the bikes.  Bikeways can sometimes interrupt flow, so we need to plan and design them carefully.

Service to Others

Service to Others is something the bicycling community needs to do better.  It’s certainly true that many cyclists participate in rides to raise funds for a variety of charities, but few events have the kind of direct service Nordhaus and Shellenberger mean.  In Orlando we’ve seen some good examples.  In the Parramore Kidz Zone Pedal 4 Pride ride, club riders help underprivileged kids learn to ride properly.  The local allycat racing folks put on a race which included buying and hauling groceries for the needy for Thanksgiving.  Earn-a-bike programs are making new community connections across the nation.  I’d like to see “street spam” (all those illegal advertisements littering the roadsides) clean up rides.  Imagination is needed.

Self-Mastery

Self-mastery is also a natural aspect of bicycling, but we often fail here, too.  Self-mastery often requires some hand-holding in the early stages, but too often bike clubs do not serve the needs of novice cyclists.  I’ve heard too many stories of people who went to one club ride and gave up, or were just too intimidated to even consider trying.  Too often we’re asking new riders to climb a much-too-high first step.  Shimano tried to address this through bicycle design with their Coasting components, believing that a bike which shifts on its own and has a simple coaster brake would bring more people into cycling, but they forgot to take the human factors into account.  The bike worked against self-mastery in the opposite way; there was nothing to master.  Note that the Coasting line has quickly gone the way of U-brakes and BioPace chain rings.

Too many “bicycle advocates” in academia insist people don’t want bicycling to be an effort; that training and practice are somehow anathema to cycling.  People don’t hesitate to take lessons for a wide variety of activities; what is so special about cycling?  Some say, “Well, we all learned to ride bikes when we were kids.  What do we need to take lessons for?”  Yet their bikes stay in their garages gathering dust.  The bikeway side argues that these people are waiting for the bikeways to be built so they can “feel safe.” (Never mind that the data from Europe shows those facilities have higher crash rates than shared roadways.)  Metro Orlando now has over 90 miles of trails and over 400 miles of bike lanes and paved shoulders, up from virtually zero in 1995.  Where are the cycling hoards?  No doubt waiting for the million-dollars-per-mile barrier-separated bikeways; a $1.5 Billion project if applied to Metro Orlando.

Keri Caffrey and I taught vehicular cycling to a group of teens this past spring.  One girl, perhaps 12 years old with minimal cycling experience, was having trouble just keeping the bike moving in a straight line, but with some one-on-one coaching from Keri, she made great improvements.  By the end of the day she was confidently cruising down four-lane Robinson Street in downtown Orlando in full control of the right lane, bridging from the “slow-poke” group to the faster kids.  As she rolled up to the back of the lead group she was absolutely beaming.

That is Self-Mastery.

We can make people feel safer now (and actually be safer, too), on nearly every road.

Belonging

The sense of Belonging is achieved by those who make it up enough steps to keep up with the club riders.  But we are not offering enough opportunities for everyone to be part of a community of bicyclists.  Critical Mass does this; the need to belong is a huge part of its growth.  Sociologist Robert Putnam explored the lack of social capital – the lack of strong social ties – in modern American cities, and especially in suburbia.  But there is also a “strength of weak ties,” which Richard Florida discusses in The Rise of the Creative Class.  Increasingly people have many weak ties in their communities instead of a few strong ones.  Bicycling lends itself well to this, and we must take advantage of it.  Social networking sites have enormous potential for us, if we learn to use them.   For example, there are 101 members of a Facebook group supporting an urban mountain biking park under I-4 near downtown Orlando, and this park is nothing but a dream for the moment.

Most importantly, Belonging for cycling must mean anybody can participate, no matter what kind of bike, what attire, how fast or slow.  Not just weekend mornings at 8:00 a.m., but weeknights, mornings, afternoons too.  It’s not a 9-to-5-Monday-thru-Friday world any more.  Paved trails can act as “bicycling nurseries,” but we must help people move beyond the paths for the sense of Belonging to meet its full potential.

Fulfillment

Cycling has great Fulfillment potential.  Just ask anyone who was unhealthy, overweight, depressed, or otherwise feeling inadequate who took up cycling and found themselves living a more positive life.  That’s why people stay with it.  If we strengthen those four previous factors the Fulfillment quotient will grow even larger.

It’s not that “only certain people can be capital B Bicyclists.”  We just haven’t done a very good job as a community of helping more people get there.

Ultimately it comes down to what story we will tell about ourselves as a community.

Story One:

“We are bicyclists.  We are vulnerable road users who are being killed and maimed at unacceptably high rates.  We are an aggrieved minority who are bullied by motorists and ignored by law enforcement, and we respond either by behaving unpredictably as individuals or gathering in large groups and impeding motorists.  We believe the majority of our class are unwilling or unable to learn to safely integrate with the motorized users of our roads. We wear helmets to protect ourselves from the inevitable head injury, and support laws which compel others to do so as well.  As an aggrieved minority we call upon our federal, state and local governments to build special places for us to travel, because without such segregation we are at great peril.  Please come join us!”

Story Two:

“We are citizens who often drive bicycles.  We are confident road users who pose very little danger to others, and only rarely are we seriously hurt ourselves.  We are highly competent and predictable.  We work to make our public roads safer for everyone, especially pedestrians and children.  We are healthy and positive because we get regular moderate exercise; we engage positively with our community, instead of being walled-off behind steel and glass.  We believe anyone can quickly learn to bike competently and confidently on our roads, and offer a variety of fun and effective ways for people to do so.  Many of us wear helmets because they are cheap insurance to protect against the rare head injury, but we don’t get too worked up if others don’t wear them.  We encourage federal, state and local governments to treat us as vehicle drivers with the same rights and responsibilities as all other drivers, and not as second-class citizens who are “in the way.”  Please come join us!”

It’s not that one story is “right” and the other is “wrong.”  Or that these are the “only stories.”  The real questions are, “What collective story do cyclists want to live by?” and “What kind of story will get us to where we want to be?”  A story of limits and tragedy, or a story of personal growth and freedom?