Cyclists and Motor Cars - the Good and the Bad.

A recent Bailiwick Express article highlighted the issue of social media critics of bicycles, and they have a point, but it is not the complete picture. Look online and there are plenty of examples of bicycle riders who appear to be so ignorant of the Highway Code that they probably think it is a book by Dan Brown. I myself have seen:

• Cyclists going down towards St Aubin in the 20 mph zone at around 30 mph
• Cyclists swerving from road to zebra crossing
• Cyclists going the wrong way down a one way street
• Cyclists going through red lights at First Tower (sometimes on road / pavement / road)
• Cyclists swerving across road to turn without hand signals
• Cyclists with one hand on handlebars and one on smart phone (looking at while cycling)
• Cyclists with headphones on while cycling (and can't hear any vehicles)

So there is a case - a rational case - for some negativity.

But there are also some cyclists who have seen cars behind and pulled in briefly to let me and other drivers through, cyclists who are polite when asking pedestrians on the railway walk to let them through (I'm very deaf so can't easily hear bells behind me), cyclists who signal in plenty of time before turning. And the vast majority of cyclists belong here.

So what is happening here. Stanford linguistics professor Arnold Zwicky has studied what he called “the frequency illusion:

"The Frequency Illusion is a result of two well-known psychological processes, selective attention (noticing things that are salient to us, disregarding the rest) and confirmation bias (looking for things that support our hypotheses, disregarding potential counterevidence), which also contribute to the two group illusions, through the mediation of various social divisions between Us and Them (which make certain features salient to us)."

When it comes to bad behaviour on the road (cyclists / car drivers) or in shared spaces (pedestrians / cyclists), we are primed to remember the worst cases, and not the many cases which do not draw themselves to our attention.

So cyclists are pouncing on the cases of bad car driving close to them, ignoring the many good drivers out there. Pedestrians - as a recent forum on the Railway walk showed - remember cyclists coming at speed, perhaps ringing bells, but not slowing down and whizzing close by them.

It's the worst behaviour which gets highlighted, much as the Jersey Evening Post puts a headline on the drunk driver without a licence, or the driver going at 50 mph in a 30 mph zone. It doesn't run stories on all the good drivers on the road, and given the number of cars on the road, it is extraordinary how statistically few accidents happen. 

Sometimes the bad behaviour of car drivers when overtaking cyclists seems to be highlighted so much that it seems there is almost a vendetta against car users. And the language there can be quite forceful and discriminatory social media too. There's a pro-cycling lobby which sometimes forgets that not everyone is close to a bus stop, some people because of health and/or age can't walk long distances to catch a bus - and some people (like myself and several friends) have balance issues and can't cycle. 

Of course if a car collides with a cyclist, the cyclist will often come off worst (as has happened), and if a cyclist collides with a pedestrian (as has happened), the pedestrian will often come off worse. While the recent statistics show cyclist / car accidents have risen over the years, it is salutory to note that More pedestrians were injured by cyclists in the UK last year than ever before, according to new figures. It happens here too, but luckily not as badly - but unlike car drivers, cyclists are not insured. 

As a States of Jersey police missive noticed, some of these risks are due to poor behaviour:

"Cycling in the pedestrian areas of town (and other parishes) is a persistent issue that potentially puts pedestrians in danger. Over the coming days officers will be focusing on this problem. Please respect the rules and WALK YOUR WHEELS."

We shouldn't stop calling out bad driving of cars close to cyclists, but bad cycling also is not good as an example to others, especially younger people. To use a cliché, we need a "grown up" dialogue, where the aim is to educate and improve. Perhaps car drivers learning to drive need more instruction about passing cyclists, and perhaps cyclists need some kind of simplified Highway code test to ensure they do know it. It is to the benefit of everyone to improve standards on roads and shared spaces.