I’m a cyclist and I’m ashamed to admit it does sometimes give me a sense of moral superiority. It’s not my best trait, but I have had impure thoughts as I sail past long lines of traffic in sunny weather.
It feels like karma. The gods are rewarding me for my virtue and punishing the petrolheads. So when a car suddenly encroaches on my space I say: “Don’t you know, I’m a messenger from the gods? You dare defy the righteous order of the roads!” (I don’t quite use those words but you get my drift.)
In my defence, I am trying to become less smug in the saddle, or at least less judgmental. I’ve been inspired in part by a new book Freewheeling: Essays on Cycling (Daunt Books), a collection of articles from pedalling authors, including comedian David O’Doherty and pioneering travel writer Dervla Murphy.
One of the most revealing pieces is by Ashleigh Young, a poet and essayist from Wellington, New Zealand. She captures the sense of freedom and delight that comes from cycling but also the anxiety that occasionally surfaces due to behaviours on the road.
She recalls an incident as a child when her father was driving home from a family trip to the beach and a turkey waddled out in front of them. Her father’s instinct was not to brake but to accelerate: “There was a strange thud ... [and] a small and terrible explosion of feathers and dust.” While her father may have sped up as an act of mercy, Young writes: “The conclusion I drew was that driving brought out something monstrous in a person.”
The essay is partly about Young’s troubled relationship with her father but it’s also a plea to be less judgmental of others when discussing road use.
I’m lucky enough to be living close to work – it’s 25 minutes door to door on the bike. But lack of affordable housing is forcing many people to commute for hours in the car. And what do I know of each individual’s troubles? This man in the Prius needs to get his ailing mother to a hospital appointment. That woman in the Kuga needs to collect her little boy from childcare.
If you find yourself getting irritated on the road, can I recommend the Ogmios school of Zen motoring, the comic creation former teacher and rapper Ivan Battaliero-Owen. In popular social media videos, he soothingly narrates car journeys through London, extolling the virtue of patience. The key is seeing yourself as one part of a greater “flow”, he says.
But there is an issue that can’t be ignored. Driving a car brings more moral responsibility than either cycling a bike or walking, since the consequences of an error, or a transgression, are far greater. The point should be obvious but it is obscured from us due to our fixation on what cognitive scientist Steven Sloman calls “sacred beliefs”.
In a new book, The Cost of Conviction (MIT Press), Sloman describes how much – too much – of our moral reasoning is dictated by broad or “sacred” values (eg belief in equality or civility) to the neglect of consequentialism. In debates on road use, two sacred beliefs are prominent: (1) “everyone has an equal right to the road” and (2) “everyone should be considerate to other road users”.
Sloman writes: “Observing a violation of a sacred value evokes strong negative affect, especially anger or disgust, the precursors to outrage”, and this can be accompanied by a desire “to punish the violator”. We can see how this plays out in debates on cycling and road safety.
Both cyclists and motorists deploy sacred belief #1 (equality) to argue over who should be afforded more space on the road, including in road design. For sacred belief #2 (civility), both motorists and cyclists can list off various offences they’ve witnessed. And whenever the subject is debated on radio call-in shows, the mood quickly turns vindictive: “Cars should be banned from the city ... Bikes without lights should be impounded.”
But we can be self-serving in the sacred values we concentrate on. Another sacred value is to avoid harming others. And Sloman points out that if we focused on this exclusively “driving is harder to justify” compared to other means of transport.
This links to his main point: If we move away from “sacred beliefs”, and focus on consequences, the moral calculation changes radically. If a bike clips a car, the paintwork could be scratched. If a car clips a bike, the cyclist could end up in hospital. Leaving consequences out of the picture creates a false equivalence between the responsibilities of motorists and the responsibilities of vulnerable road users.
Sloman writes: “Although we cannot and should not give up on sacred values entirely, we would live happier lives in less conflicted societies if we relied less on them and put more time and effort into framing issues consequentially.” Thinking more about the consequences of road behaviours, and less about perceived character flaws of individual road users, can help to take the heat out of debate. Education and empathy both play a part.
For all the criticism of motorists, my experience is that the vast majority of drivers are very considerate to cyclists (I’m a driver too, by the way). Mind you, the other day a taxi driver nearly winged me. I made a polite gesture reminding him of the recommended (1.5 metre) gap and followed it with a quick thumbs up. Replying, he honked his horn in what I took to be a friendly manner.
A small rotation in the right direction, I’d like to think.
