All the rage
What's to blame for all the anger as cyclists, drivers, and citizens fight over their rights on the streets? Is it $4 gas? Young punks? Class warfare? Poor urban design? It's time to theorize.
There's lots to say about the recent outbursts of what street rage, from the death of James Paroline at the south Seattle traffic circle to the Critical Mass beat-down of a driver on Capitol Hill last week. Regardless of where you put the blame, one thing is clear: tempers are flaring on city streets.
Road rage used to be driver-on-driver stuff. Now we've seen a gardener killed while watering a traffic circle and a frightened driver angered at bike activists run a couple down, then have his car and head smashed in response. But the violence isn't just in Seattle. Portland has had a series of bike rage incidents in recent weeks.
In one, a cyclist smashed the window of a Tri-Met bus. In another, a Portland cyclist savagely attacked a driver using his bike as a weapon. It turned out the victim was himself a cycling advocate. And in yet another confrontation, a cyclist got into a fight with a car passenger who also happened to be a cycling advocate and bike shop employee.
What we're seeing isn't eco bike punks versus bad nasty SUV drivers, we're seeing a rage and guerilla warfare in which in some cases, politically correct citizens are eating — or at least punching out — their own.
Brian Miller blogging at The Daily Weekly thinks the Paroline incident is our Kitty Genovese moment and warns that there's a might-makes-right-of-way attitude on the streets. Miller, I think rightly, starts to look at the broader picture. He writes:
Paroline is a martyr of sorts to a new conflict: That between citizens and cars. With traffic pressures, gas prices, and land values all peaking at once, pedestrians and motorists all seem equally frazzled and angry. The question we increasingly face is, Who runs this town? Who has the right of way?
So is street rage fueled by $4 gas, gentrification, economic hard times, and gridlocked political process?
Paroline was apparently struck down because he was blocking the road so that no one would drive over his garden hose, and angry drivers objected. The whole point of the Critical Mass protests is to commit civil disobedience to reclaim road rights for bikes. That people feel affronted to have to steer around a hose, or feel they have a moral right to block traffic to water flowers, suggests a turf war. That a driver would risk running over cyclists to get to a birthday party (as happened on Capitol Hill) or that cyclists would resort to vigilante violence against a frightened gay man suggests a power struggle in which actual human beings have devolved into mere symbols of good and evil.
These various incidents suggest class and race issues, too. Paroline was white and his alleged assailant black. In some of the incidents, you get a whiff of class warfare: the bike people versus the car people, the young populist bike punks versus the monied four-wheeled bourgeoisie.
A very thoughtful and timely piece on bike rage is in the latest issue of Momentum, a Vancouver, B.C.-based urban cycling magazine. Writer and rider Charles Montgomery writes about the car and bike rage (he's experienced it from both sides) and he believes it stems from poor urban design, which exacerbates conflict:
This kind of road rage is a symptom of the corrosive effect that modern commuting has on urban culture. Aggressive streets are not just dangerous, they change the way we feel and the way we treat each other, even when we're not commuting. ... The problem is that city planners have mixed bikes and cars together in ways that offer little certainty about how each should operate, and lots of chances for conflict. Cyclists feel threatened in traffic, just like drivers. Many of us feel hard done by and under attack. I sure do. The average arterial road is an engine of conflict.
Don't blame the other driver or rider, he says, blame the road, and do what you can politically to solve the problem. "If I want real change, I've got to ease up on the outrage and channel my frustration into urban design activism," Montgomery writes. Your fellow citizens aren't the enemy and, in fact, because so many bike riders also drive and so many drivers also ride bikes, the enemy is often someone just like you.
Comments:
Posted Mon, Jul 28, 6:13 p.m. inappropriate
TREND OR ISOLATED INCIDENTS: I have been riding a bicycle in Seattle for about 20 years (I don't commute, I ride for errands and pleasure). I have noticed a distinct improvement in the attitude and courtesy of
Seattle drivers in that time. I can remember pickup drivers shouting bad words at me a long time ago; very close brushes that I thought (at the time) were intentional.
Conflicts occur, sometimes because of dumb things I have done, but generally the drivers are tolerant and friendly.
I think the Critical Mass people are a little too eager for a fight.
Posted Mon, Jul 28, 8:10 p.m. inappropriate
Why doesn't CM ride down Rainer Ave "corking" some Saturday night?: I'd buy the pay for view on that! "What we have here is a failure to communicate...Some bikers just can't be reached". Apologies to Struther Martin.
Posted Mon, Jul 28, 8:14 p.m. inappropriate
Blame the road? What about pedestrians?: I walk almost all the time, often accompanied by a small dog (terrier). I have a bike, but use it rarely. My young teen children ride their bikes everywhere (the oldest, 17, could drive but doesn't; the 14 year old is bike-only). In short, however, as a mother of kids who are cyclists, I have "skin" in the bike game (literally), even though I'm first and foremost a pedestrian, and sometimes a driver.
As a pedestrian, I have to say that I have had it up to *here* with cyclists who think they're superior to everyone else (including pedestrians) because they're not burning fossil fuels and they're out there showing those evil drivers what's what.
We have bike lanes on quite a few roads here in Victoria, yet cyclists ride on sidewalks to avoid going the right way on one-ways (including busy downtown sidewalks of streets where the road goes East one-way, and has a bike lane to boot, which they ignore, using the sidewalk instead so they can go West). They ride on sidewalks when they want to avoid cars. They trump the rights of pedestrians because ...why? They think they're "superior" to the evil cars? I don't get it.
Fact is, if a bike going at 20 clicks hits a pedestrian, it's really going to hurt.
Just because a car can kill a cyclist doesn't mean that cyclists have carte blanche to wipe out walkers.
By the way, the plague of "mobility scooters" (whether for the aged or the morbidly obese who just can't manage a good walk) is another bane of the sidewalks.
Point is, if you're going faster than walking pace, it behooves you to be courteous to the slower moving "traffic" (those of us on foot). Same rule applies on the road: you go faster than the other guy, then you better have some understanding of physics -- of how velocity combined with weight translates into projectile force -- and behave yourself accordingly.
As it stands, some cyclists act as if they're made of air, forgetting that they're x-number of pounds going x-number of clicks per hour (velocity).
Posted Mon, Jul 28, 8:18 p.m. inappropriate
Since you quoted from Vancouver document: Just a quick PS: I felt that since you quoted from that Vancouver document, I could add my two cents from across the Strait (on Vancouver Island/ Victoria). Our city is very dense, with a dense and walkable downtown, and with one of the highest cycling rates in the country. Cycling is very much encouraged, and that's great. But in a city, you have to consider the pedestrians.
Posted Mon, Jul 28, 9:32 p.m. inappropriate
Bikes vs Cars: Interesting article in Crosscut. Perhaps, though, the problem could be rephrased to something like this:
I'm-in-a-hurry motorists vs holier-than-thou bicyclists.
We need motorists to be more patient and bicyclists to understand that cycling is not a religion - and even if it is, motorists are not obligated to join. Neither owns the road and both benefit from yielding the right of way.
Ken
Posted Mon, Jul 28, 11:36 p.m. inappropriate
Bad Design is a major factor: City planners and the Department of Transportation need to do a better job of reducing conflicts between users (drivers, bicyclists, pedestrians). Sadly, their first priority is almost always the driver, followed much further by the pedestrians, and lastly the bicyclists.
When the City creates a bike lane that cannot be used safely (e.g., 2nd Ave), then bicyclists put themselves at risk by trying use it (you'll get doored for sure on 2nd if you try to stay in the bike lane)--or they ride in the roadway and drivers get p-o'd because they don't understand why the rider isn't using the bike lane.
Increased traffic congestion aggravates drivers and they often take it out on the weakest target--the bicyclist. Too often, drivers fail to appreciate that bicyclists are just trying to get around and have the same rights to the roads as motor vehicle drivers.
One cheap, quick, and effective thing that the City can do is to install "Bicycles May Use Full Lane" signs on streets commonly used by bicyclists that are not wide enough to accommodate bike lanes--and where the lanes are too narrow for bikes to ride side by side with motor vehicles. While it's true that bicycles can legally "take the lane" anywhere they feel they need to for safety, this type of signage reminds drivers to be on the look out and educates them about the law.
Then there is the fallacy that bicyclist "don't pay their share". As many folks have pointed out, roads are subsidized by non-drivers and bicyclists usually also pay car taxes (most of them drive, too--really).
When the city fails to deal with known problems (e.g., Ballard Bridge, lack of bike lanes or signage on major bike arterials, lack of connectivity in bike routes/bike lanes, lack of adequate bike parking, etc.), some bicyclists take out their frustration by bending (or breaking) laws. It's not the right thing to do--but when a segment of the population feels they are not being treated with the respect and consideration they deserve, that is sometimes what happens.
Posted Tue, Jul 29, 7:20 a.m. inappropriate
Cultivating Social Behavior Instead of Compliant Behavior: In the most recent issue of the Wilson Quarterly, there is a piece about a Dutch traffic "guru" named Hans Monderman (http:// www.wilsoncenter.org/ index.cfm? fuseaction=wq.current). He tells the story of a small town in the Netherlands where a fatality had occurred at a crossing over a main road that went through the small town. The normal response would have been to add lots of traffic-mitigation features (signs, speed bumps, crosswalk hatching, lights, etc.), but what they did instead was reengineer the way the road worked and actually removed all signs and with some other changes made the road seem more like it was in a small village, and the result was that driver uncertainty led to reduced speeds and fewer incidents. In a similar experiment, one whole town in the Netherlands actually removed all signs except for those at the city limits saying, "This is a sign-free town." The results were the same. At Hyde Park in London, they tried similar engineering with the way the sidewalk and road related to each other, and also found improvement.
Monderman says his goal is not to get people to comply with signs, which is mindless; his goal is to get people to act in a more *social* way when driving, biking, and walking. The results so far have been very good.
The same article goes on to argue that Americans have been slow to adopt effective socially based traffic mitigation techniques for whatever reason (e.g. proper traffic circles are safer than four-way lighted stops, for instance).
In Seattle's own recent fatal traffic-circle assault and in the Critical Mass violence, we are seeing people aggressively assert their transportation rights at the expense of other people (antisocial behavior)--and probably most people in Seattle, just like me, can attest to numerous instances of antisocial driving behavior every day that doesn't result in fatalities.
This cultivation of social behavior is entirely absent in the SDOT mindset, and as a result Seattle doesn't have a pedestrian-friendly environment outside areas that already have pedestrian improvements. The addition of quasi bike lanes to a lot of streets is staking out territory for bikes, but nothing else is being done to cultivate social behavior by both bikers and drivers. The City of Seattle does nothing to enforce local access rules, weight limit rules, residential-street-designation rules, so Seattle is a town where you get semi-trucks and concrete trucks regularly driving on residential streets to find a faster route--nor does the City of Seattle do anything to cultivate social behavior by these drivers in consideration of residential areas (e.g. Monderman-style road improvements).
There is a near complete abnegation of social behavior in Seattle in terms of driving, biking, and walking.
Until we can figure out how to do better at cultivating social behavior and getting people to think about each other rather than to think about themselves, these tragedies and the thousands of everyday road rage incidents occurring on Seattle streets will simply continue.
My personal suggestion is to revamp SDOT: we need fresh, social minds and fresh, social thinkers in that stale and largely ineffective, antisocial institution.
Posted Tue, Jul 29, 9:43 a.m. inappropriate
RE: Cultivating Social Behavior Instead of Compliant Behavior: I agree that over regulation of traffic is part of the problem. Many traffic engineers consider themselves social engineers as well, and love to make drivers, riders and pedestrians jump through hoops for their own gratification. I live near the town of Gig Harbor. They are forever putting in streets that could accommodate traffic at 40 MPH or more and setting speed limits at 25 or 30 on those streets. People will not go that slow on a road engineered to support a higher speed. They also love to take intersections where one road meets another at less than 90 degrees and put little jiggetty-jogs in at the point of intersection. Well, now the last five feet of the road meets at 90 degrees, but at the expense of placing all kinds of new curbing obstacles in the drivers' way. I've seen some pretty scary car and bike interactions where the roadbed makes some unexpected gyrations. There are a lot of arrogant SOB cyclists in Seattle, that's for sure, but that's not helped by designing streets like thrill ride tracks.
Posted Tue, Jul 29, 11:24 a.m. inappropriate
its not just driver vs biker: At least in Seattle it seems that everyone is getting more pissed off, and everyone is driving biking or even walking more aggresivily. Most of my driving is in the core area of the city, and seldom does a day pass when I dont see at least one red light ran (bikers and drivers), or right turn out of a center lane, or driving the wrong way up a one way street, or jay walking pedestrians daring you to run them down. Add to this the fact that due to construction--which is everywhere this summer, you simply cant get there from here.
Everyone needs to chill.
Posted Tue, Jul 29, 8:26 p.m. inappropriate
A couple thoughts: Starting with the Netherlands, we would have trouble going the route of no signs since we are so certain that there must be someone to blame if anything happens. (And are going to sue them into homelessness if possible.)
With regard to basic physics, when I'm on a bicycle, I know who will lose if I hit a car or a car hits me and it won't be the car. Simple self preservation says: stay out of cars' ways. The moral high ground of having the right-of-way doesn't heal broken bones or raise the dead.
Most important of all, the rules-of-the-road apply to all users of the roads. If all cyclists observed the rules-of-the-road, there would be fewer irate motorists and vice versa. No cyclist has any more "moral high ground" than any motorist. Remember, the roads belong to everyone. (And everyone should watch out for pedestrians - esp. the ones who can't figure out they aren't visible to drivers!)
Posted Wed, Jul 30, 10:20 a.m. inappropriate
Enforce the laws: If the police would enforce the laws, I think things would improve some. When was the last time you actually saw an intersection where there was a car parked outside of 30 ft from it? I can never see what traffic (pedestrian, car, or bike) is coming when I approach an intersection because there are always cars parked abutting the intersection. Enforce biking laws where bikers need to behave as pedestrians if on sidewalks. Don't allow any one to block intersections.
It's a partial solution.
And get a dang rail system that hits all points of the city and suburbs too that is affordable.
Posted Thu, Jul 31, 10:21 a.m. inappropriate
roll of cellphone law: I wonder ( altho I do agree with the policy) if in our designed life of moving too fast, always being a bit late, if cell phones might have provided one way of dealing with some of the chaos. the real issue is I believe, the ways our traffic patterns are designed, poor signage included. bike paths, yes, basic understanding of the car/bike courtesy rules, yes.
too many no's are coming down the pike.
yesterday I got a string of swear word for not turning fast enough right on red -
though I didn't consider it safe. I was very glad he didn't get out of the car.
how do we share a shrink space.
Posted Fri, Aug 1, 12:12 p.m. inappropriate
RE: roll of cellphone law: Cell phones are still allowed in cars, as long as you're using the speakerphone feature or a headset.
Posted Fri, Aug 8, 3:41 p.m. inappropriate
Yell and Scream: People should be yelling and screaming.
Living in the Puget Sound over the past 15 years is like being the frog in the slowly burning water. We just looked around and our skin is burning!
You can't dump 1 million new people in a place designed for 500,000 and not expect trouble. Especially now that the party is over, there's no more easy money and everyone just realized what a dump the place is.
As far as bicycles, riding in Seattle for 20 years has turned me into a madman. I cuss, scream and yell at cars. I have an airhorn. People in Kent have a nickname for me -- you know what it is? Crazy Man. That's what it is...and as my mother says, "you know why I'm crazy...because you kids drove me crazy!"