Cars, automobiles, carros, coffins, whatever you want to call them, have an intimate relationship with bicyclists, unfortunately. They surround us, tranport us at times, but mostly they intimidate us. Cars and bicyclists are thrown into the same jungle of transportation infrastructure and thus must interact. This is one of the many coersive relationships that we as modern humans are forced to deal with.

As an anarchist, I claim to choose how, when, and where I will interact with who. I attempt to eliminate the  coersiveness of daily interactions by not allowing others to choose how I interact with them. As a bicycle commuter, the most forced interaction I participate in is with automobiles. I need to get somewhere, they need to get somewhere, we have to use the same roads. I choose to interact with them every time I leave the house.

It is safer to use roads instead of sidewalks. Once I venture onto those roads, I have found it better that I don’t allow any car or driver bully me. It is easy for cyclists to feel inferior and therefore afraid as they interact with traffic. Feeling inferior forces us to the sidelines. Cyclists attempt to be small, to avoid being in the road even though they have full legal rights and deserve to be there more than their automated counterparts.

I choose to interact with cars as the bully. I use the lane when I need or want. I take the space that is mine and allow them to use the space outside of where I am. I have learned that to feel comfortable on the road I must occupy space. I make myself big. Instead of riding as far out of the way as possible, I get in the way. I use shoulders only when they are big enough to allow me to be safely overtaken. I exercise my human right to transport myself in any way that I deem worthy. I think the most important this to understand is that a cyclist doesn’t ask for permission to share the road, they allow cars to share the road with them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbeDxOHfT68

An email of interest I recieved today from the Mexican cycling post, Bicitekas:

Les mando un video de una nota en TV de un noticiero
gringo. Perdón que les mande esta reflexión en inglés,
pero me pareció buena para reforzar la idea de los
retos para pensar la bicicleta como vehículo en la
calle. X.
We have plenty of evidence of both the power of the
public emotion against vehicular cycling and of the means of
overcoming that emotion in individuals. The means of overcoming that cyclist inferiority phobia are repeated successful exposure to real traffic of gradually increasing intensity. A useful first step in such acclimatization is the video work of Dan and Brian, which can be viewed in a non-threatening environment, but it has to be followed by success in cycling in real traffic.There are plenty of cyclists who cycle successfully, relatively speaking, in real traffic, but still don’t seem to be “acclimatized” . As an example, consider Michael Clarke, the KFI nager recently featured in the NBC news story, This guy commutes some 34 miles per day in LA traffic. By most any reasonable measure, he is an “experienced” traffic cyclist. But the clips show him riding far to the right (certainly as compared to the clips shown by Dan and Brian), we know he has been hit at least once, and his words reveal a strong sense of inferiority while he is out there. I don’t mean to pick on Mr. Clarke, but I believe he is a fairly typical example of a very common type of cyclist: he doesn’t make the gross errors of riding on the wrong side, riding at night without proper lights and reflectors, riding on sidewalks, blowing through red lights, etc., but he still doesn’t act like a (slow moving) vehicle driver when he is out there, particularly not in terms of negotiating for ROW and
controlling lanes when they are too narrow to be shared, when approaching intersections,
etc. In fact, very few cyclists seem to do that. How do we popularize this more assertive,
safer and more rewarding form of “integrated cycling”, as exemplified by the work of Dan and Brian, within the community of “experienced” cyclists? As far as I can tell, for the most part, these are not the folks signing up for LAB courses, and, much of what is covered in those classes they already know. Plus, they think doing anything much different from what they already do is “crazy” and/or “asking for it”. They believe the problem is the motorists and favor bike lanes as reprieve that gives them space that they don’t have to fight for. They believe most if not all of the problems that they have, be they close calls or actual hits, are par for the course, something that is inevitable. How to reach them? How to get through to them?
Serge
 

A brother in arms.

Declare your Sovereignty!

Remember tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. is the Alliance night ride at Red Rock Bicycle. We will be doing the Barrel Roll.

Peace.