| The problem is not what happens to a bike or a car in a comparable accident. The problem is that some car drivers somehow believe that bikes don’t belong on the road. They display two very distinct and easy to notice behaviour: 1. They deny bike presence on the road: They refuse to yield, don’t check their mirror, and run them over as if the bike is not there. When you point out the discrepancy, they just affirm that cyclists have to yield to more important traffic no matter what the condition. Another symptom of that is drivers thinking that bikes should not be on the road and harassing them with honks, and revving their engine. When they pass them, or on-line, they loudly claim that bikes are not allowed on the road or have a (non-existent) obligation to move away of a far more important car drivers threatens them. In that process, they speed (which is illegal), pass dangerously (also illegal) and threaten people with bodily harm (again, illegal). Retraining, license ban and jail sentences are easy ways to get dangerous people like that to not put people’s lives in danger. A third symptom is that they claim that “no one” is using bike infrastructure (in spite of evidence like what we see in London) because they refuse to see it. They see no issue with routinely parking on bike lanes or blocking bike-only passages.
This complete denial of another humanity is hard to imagine if you haven’t witnessed it, but it’s very common. 2. They have a cop-out of thinking that bikes are “dangerous” because they project their own dangerous and unhealthy driving habits as “normal” and impossible to modify——denying that those habits mean they break the law in several ways. Crash don’t just happen: drivers choose to not pay attention. Actually supportive drivers are not pretending they care: they are enthusiastic about cycling because when they are around bikes, drivers don’t honk, threaten or put cyclists’ lives in danger. And they can’t imagine that anyone would. It’s very simple for cyclists to be safe: drivers should look at them and thing “This is a human, going from somewhere to somewhere else, like me. I should not kill them.” If they don’t, the cyclist is not the one in danger: the driver is. |