Re: Rights v Responsibilities

I've had two occasions when I stopped to exchange views with a motorist.

One was with the driver of a pickup truck who had hollered at me a 
couple times, dropping back each time to pass and holler again. I was, 
of course, petrified when he stopped to get out of his truck, but 
started to talk and explain what I was up to and let him get his word 
in. It took a while, but I finally got a story. This man had once 
witnessed a cyclist get whacked by the riarview mirror of a truck and 
the cyclist had been hurt. This experience had impressed itself upon the 
man as proof positive that riding on the road is unsafe and his yelling 
at me was actually his way of conveying this important information to 
me. He sincerely feared for the safety of cyclists. So, I took a turn 
and explained that I wasn't reckless, that I knew about hazards, took 
precautions, had a family that I didn't want to orphan, but that riding 
on the highways was possible to do safely and the obligation of 
motorists to respect. The guy really slowed down from his initial fiery 
passion and, when we parted, seemed to have an altered perspective. He 
had previously thought cyclists must be idiots and/or scofflaws, so 
having a civil conversation made, I think, a big impact.

The second instance was when a police officer was yelling at me to get 
to the curb on a very narrow street in the city. I continued to ride 
about 3 feet out from the curb, up the hill and, when he pulled over the 
yellow line to yell at me through his open window, I didn't respond for 
a while. Finally, he made some indication that I should pull over for 
him and stop, so I did. Well, he was convinced that bikes had to make 
room for cars, regardless of any safety issues and I tried to counter 
that, in fact, I had a right to be riding there and he had a right to 
pass only if it was safe (no oncoming traffic, etc.). That got nowhere 
for a while. Then, I figured that he had me pegged for a psychotic 
anarchist, so I thought maybe I could temper that impression. I told him 
that I'd been riding a lot, had a job, had a son who had nearly been 
killed in a bike crash, and that I had given a lot of thought to the 
matter of safety and rights of cyclists and had used that information in 
my involvement with the bike club. The officer gradually calmed down a 
bit and became less adamant. When I told him, finally, that the law 
actually favors my taking the lane in a situation where passing is 
unsafe within the lane, and urged him to look it up when he got back to 
the station, he actually accepted the mission and seemed ready to learn 
something.

So, what I get from those experiences is that people come at bicyclists 
with a huge lot of uninformed baggage, assumptions about cycling and 
cyclists that have no basis in real law or real people. It takes time to 
defuse the force of those preconceptions, but sometimes it can be done.

Andrejs
Ithaca, NY


On 2/9/11 10:01 AM, Chuck Davis wrote:
> My experience suggests that it is often difficult to explain anything to
> anyone who doesn't want to listen
>
> On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 1:27 AM, Rod Skeggs<touringindochina-/[email protected]>wrote:
>
>>> >  >I hope you mean engage in the mutually respectful
>> >  exchange of ideas through polite conversation.  %^)<
>> >