You’re driving along. You occupy an unyielding metal vehicle weighing a ton, more or less. You overtake a bicycle rider. You have a stripe of paint on the road to your left. You have a human being riding a bicycle on your right.
What kind of mind can’t decide which of these should be accorded the greater degree of inviolability? Whatever type it is, we seem to have lots of them among us. “I can’t cross that paint stripe! It’s a double yellow! I’ll just grit my teeth and take a chance with that human life over there!”
You’d think people could figure this out a little better, yet time after time this odd pattern evidences itself. Not only do we get obscure glimpses into the minds of single individuals this way, we also see how humanity tend to act when in “herd mode.” On the positive side, when one person in a line of traffic swings wide to give the bicyclist some room, the rest tend to follow along. This vice works versa, however, since the opposite pattern is just as likely to appear. One person deciding to “play chicken” with the bicycle rider will lead a string of drivers to engage in similar behavior. Apparently, we are only about as good as the people around us.
Have you ever seen how, if one sheep in a line going through a gate is spooked by something and jumps, the next ten sheep will jump in just the same place without knowing why? People are much like sheep in much of their behavior, but we don’t like to acknowledge that, do we?
Of course, it is hard to ignore the serious side of this issue. Sometimes this game of chicken becomes more than stupid and annoying. Yeah, it can turn deadly. That’s why people have organized to try to enlighten the sheep…uh, public. Consider Ghostbikes, a somewhat shadowy movement that locks white-painted bikes to street signs near the sites of bicycle accidents. Consider also Ride of Silence, which encourages cyclists worldwide to engage in a “silent slow-paced ride (max. 12 mph/20 kph) in honor of those who have been injured or killed while cycling on public roadways.” The annual ride takes place May 20 at 7:00 p.m.
So, I don’t know; this seems like a simple issue–one that shouldn’t even need to be addressed. It’s just that we have so many bitter, angry, hostile people in our world today, and they continue to express that hostility so freely on the public roadways. I guess it will always be this way, but if a few people see the light, these organizations will not have wasted their efforts.