Cycle-ogical Insight #1

Cycle-ogical Insight #1

A national transportation research group says South Carolina roads are so bad, they cost drivers $3 billion a year. The report from The Road Information Program says 46 percent of the state’s major roads and highways are rated in poor condition.  — WPDE News Channel 15, January 16, 2015: http://www.carolinalive.com/news/story.aspx?id=1149983#.VLkNlijC7ao

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SITUATION:

The lane to his left was clear. The traffic light ahead was about to turn red. Visibility, good. Although pedaling a respectable 25 mph (aided by tailwind and self-assertiveness), I was doing so at some personal risk: there was little room for error due to the width of, and congestion on, this particular road, accounted one of the most dangerous (in terms of annual deaths) in the state of South Carolina, which “is tied with West Virginia for the highest traffic fatality rate in the country” (WPDE). Being mindful of my four-wheeled co-commuters, I spun inches from the wheel-grabbing grass of the litter-strewn shoulder. Still, he—big white American truck, double-cab, the works—nearly touched my tires with his own. It was morning. It was too early for aggression of this sort. Minutes later, I sailed past the white behemoth, stopped as predicted, at the red light.

DIAGNOSIS:

He was emblematic of two illnesses symptomatic of American motorists: (1) fear of bicycles, (2) jealousy of bicyclists.

EXPLANATION:

(1) Human beings fear what they don’t understand. This driver didn’t understand why a person would be bicycling at 8:00 a.m. in 35 degrees on roads still damp after a night of cold drenching rain. And the nerve of me to be doing it on this road! People hate what they fear. The driver tried to scare me off, show me who was boss, alarm me. It didn’t work. His big truck with its screaming 8-cylinder engine was, as compared to my bicycle, insignificant. He didn’t scare me; I scared him.

(2) They pounded past me, twenty thirty forty per minute, each one pell-melling toward either a traffic light, an accident, a ticket, and/or a job they loathed. I will express for them what they are incapable of articulating: that they resent having to stop at that traffic light, one after another, day after day. That unless it’s of the flipped-car variety, they don’t get as much pleasure as they used to get in observing an accident, which isn’t worth the slow-down anyway. That they hate going to court, settling tickets, seeing the insurance premium increase as a result of failing to detect that cop with the radar-gun. That they can’t stand paying the monthly note on the sleek, super-comfortable, tech-loaded vehicle that they are nonetheless so proud of being seen in, even by strangers. That most of all they loathe having to do all of this in order to get to an office or store or institution of some sort where the next eight or nine hours evaporate in the performance of labor from which they are alienated. The one described above—the man operating the gigantic white truck—distilled in his aggression toward me his jealousy of my freedom, seemingly absolute (although I know better), on my bicycle, which I dared to deploy on “his” highway. Jealousy caused him to veer close to me, to make this pathetic attempt at retaliation for what he, cut off from the elemental cold and the human need to exercise one’s muscles, was unable to enjoy. Strange, isn’t it, that even bad jobs—I’ve had my share—seem more bearable when you commute to them by bicycle?

Roadysseus

1.16.15