Tuesday 17 November 2015

Is how we're treated based on the bike we ride?

I should start this by saying I've never, for a moment, believed the idea that close passes of cyclists are due to inattention. The very idea that a motorist is accurately judging a close pass at speed is farcical - its just not a feasible claim. Close passes are intentional, aggressive acts.

So I'm somewhat predisposed to believe that observations based on how I'm treated on different bikes are genuine rather than all in my head. And I'm finding that on my funky chunky new bike I'm getting rather more dodgy overtakes than I do on any of my others.

I don't commute on that one every day of course - its great fun to ride and can take a hell of a load, but I'd rather commute on something with a bit more zip to it unless I'm getting shopping - and yesterday I wanted to indulge my clementine habit with a couple of boxes from the market at lunchtime, so off I went to work on the bike with the big baskets.

There were four crazy overtakes on the way home. The most frightening for me was this one:



So I'm apparently not a bike, I'm a gap in traffic.

But its worse (for others on the road) than that - it would seem I'm big enough and slow enough to make it necessary to squeeze past at a junction and try to throw your taxi into a bus.


Now I get silly motorists no matter what I ride, but its so noticeable that if I'm on a 'typical' bike I get the occasional close pass or some hostility sometimes, whereas if I'm no the chunky bike I'm getting almost no verbal aggression but NO END of bad passes. And if I'm on a road bike I get no end of anger.

Much has been written on driver behaviour and how the drivers perception of the rider is important - but I've seen less attention given to what kind of bike we're riding. It seems likely to me (from my own observations) that motorists pay enough attention to what we're riding such that how they act towards us is significantly influenced by this - its more evidence that the way motorists act around us is not just one of those things, the dodgy passes aren't accidental, and that the negative experiences that put many people off cycling are caused by direct, intentional aggression of motorists. Its not just how we ride or what we wear that influences what form this hostility takes - its what we ride. 

Why ought a moton give a shit about what we ride? That's something to discuss another day.

8 comments:

  1. Hmm. I'm always on a drop bar road-y bike. I get little verbal aggression and lots of awful overtakes. ANNECDOTES! Yay.

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    1. I should add (and will in another post some time!) that where I'm riding is also a big factor. I get more verbal on the road bike in Kings Hedges and Arbury, not so much outside of the city. And I get less of that on the broad tyred hybrid in the same parts of town.

      I think a whole load of perceived class and status things come in to play - and it seems to me like the bike I'm on is part of it. But I'm willing to hear whether anyone has looked into that any deeper.

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  2. I ride a recumbent, a variety of drop bar touring bikes, some 60s Moultons and one MTB. No helmet no lycra. The 'bent gets the widest pass, then the drop-bars & Moultons and closest the MTB. I haven't observed any difference panniers / no panniers. Most of my riding is the villages & small towns of darkest East Cambs, and the country lanes connecting them.

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    1. Interesting, thanks! It can't just be inattentiveness contributing to close passes - these folk know what they're doing or why would what we ride matter?

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    3. My theory is that as they see few recumbents I have their attention all the time I'm in their vision. Other bikes they unconciously dismiss from attention as soon as they've worked out that "It's just a bicycle". In the nearest town, Newmarket, ratty MTBs are by a good way the most common bicycle, and are ridden by stable hands. Bottom of the local food chain IOW.

      The "advice" from those seated on a horse about the gear to use to get up the hill out of town past the training grounds can be pretty dubious, and I always try to make sure I have enough breath available to answer back!

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  3. The kind guy who tried to resuscitate my old bike told me about his radically different strategies for riding a Brompton vs a road bike, and that I should be aware of how to adapt my riding if I changed bike type when I got a new one. I think his observation was that if you looked more competent, people gave you less room. (Perhaps because they think it's only incompetence which makes you swerve, not potholes?)

    Presumably also, expectations about how fast you are going influence how urgently people want to overtake. Many drivers seem utterly incapable of judging the speed of a cyclist; they may assume you are "slow", even if you are going at the speed limit. That's probably influenced by whether their first glance labels you as "racer" or "pootler" - which is influenced by the bike type.

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  4. My own anecdotal "evidence" is that there are some roads where I suffer more close passes than others. On the road from Fulbourn to Worts' Causeway I tend to get more close passes. My view is that a significant minority of motorists just don't want bother waiting until there is a safe place to pass. Which suggests that the problem is more one of impatience than aggression. (Although there are most definitely some aggressive drivers out there.)

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