Who Owns The Road In Gaborone?

I own the road:  I pay road tax.

I've heard some version of this argument over the years.  What drivers often forget is that those of us who don't drive are paying all of the same taxes as those who use their cars to get to the corner store.  As I pointed out to someone who accused me of taking "his" parking space, the only tax I don't pay that a driver pays is the one levied on gasoline.  But, in a sense, I pay for it, as other taxes, at least to some degree, subsidize the relatively low cost of petrol here in the US, just as the deductions from my paychecks help to pay for road building and maintenance.

The "I pay, I own" argument is even more emphatic, or vehement, in those places where a newly-emergent middle class is forsaking two wheels and pedals in favor of four wheels and gas pedals.  That, of course, was the story of Chinese cities early in this century.  Now it seems to be the narrative in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana.

Whereas most people rode bikes to school or work just a few years ago, now the bicycle has a double stigma:  It is seen as archaic and something that you use only if you're poor.  

I've never been to Gaborone, but according to BBC correspondent Sharon Tshipa, it's "the worst place in the world to ride a bike."  Not only are the drivers as reckless as the worst kinds of teenagers, they are quite open in expressing their hostility toward cyclists.  Some even threaten or promise to mow down riders.

These dangers to bicycle riders’ physical safety and mental well-being are compounded by hazards to their internal medical condition. Gaborone has some of the world’s worst air quality.  The sheer volume of vehicular traffic would, by itself, be enough to degrade the city’s environment.  But a particular quality of the city’s fleet makes things worse.  While some new cars are imported from neighboring South Africa, many more used vehicles come from other countries, where they failed to meet emission standards.

Whether or not Gaborone is the worst place to cycle, it’s sad to see people forsake their bikes, and disturbing that such hostility has developed against remaining cyclists.  From what I understand, some Chinese cities are re-discovering the bicycle.  Perhaps Gaborone will do likewise one day.

Have You Experienced A Hate Crime On Your Bike?

What do lynching, gay-bashing, rape and child molestation have in common?

The perpetrators of these crimes see their victims as less human than themselves.  That is one reason why lynchings and attacks against LGBT people are classified as hate crimes:  Seeing someone as less human than one's self is, to my mind, a pretty good working definition of "hate".  For that reason, I would also classify rape,child molestation and domestic violence in the same way.

And acts of aggression by motor vehicles against cyclists.

Now, I have long felt this way.  But now a study from Australia could give lawmakers good reason to classify motorists who deliberately run cyclists off the road in the same category as those who harass or assault immigrants.




Researchers from Queensland University of Technology, Monash University and the University of Melbourne studied 442 people in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.  

The subjects were first asked whether or not they were cyclists.  Then they were shown one of two images:  one showing the evolution of ape to human, or another showing stages of evolution from a cockroach to human.  That second image was designed, according to Alexa Debosc (the study's lead author) because some cyclists reported slurs in which they were compared to mosquitoes, cockroaches or other insects.  The images were given to the subjects at random.



Perhaps not surprisingly, a far greater percentage of non-cyclists than cyclists rated cyclists as not fully human.  Moreover, non-cyclists were much more likely to put cyclists on the ape or insect (depending on which image they were shown) end of the "spectrum" rather than somewhere in the middle.  Whether the subjects were shown the ape-human or insect-human images, the percentages of subjects who saw cyclists as less than fully human was just about the same.

Perhaps even less surprisingly, non-cyclists were far more likely to engage in harassment of cyclists (e.g., shouting or making rude gestures at us) as well as acts of direct aggression such as throwing an object, driving too close or using a car to deliberately block or cut off a cyclist.

In their report, the researchers acknowledge some inherent biases, as young, high-income males were over-represented at least in comparison to their proportion in the overall Australian population.  It's a lot easier for those with wealth or other kinds of privilege to dehumanize those who lack them:  That is why, for example, members of racial minorities and immigrants are so stigmatized.  

That acknowledgment, however, allows the researchers to draw the parallel I've made between the dehumanization of cyclists by motorists and of minority groups, such as Mexicans and blacks in the US or Arabs and Aborigines in Australia.  That is a very important point because, as the researchers point out, it isn't enough simply to "encourage positive attitudes" in order to curb aggression. (Too many diversity programs, trainings and policies do just that or, worse, try to bully, coerce or intimidate people into such attitudes.)  A better course of action, the researchers say, is to put a human face on cyclists:  Just as prejudice against, say, Muslims or gays results from other people seeing them as monolithic, hostility against cyclists comes from motorists seeing us as lycra-clad law-flouting machines that whiz by them.  

And reducing prejudice, and the resulting aggression, against cyclists or other groups of people could also halt a self-fufilling prophecy.  People who are dehumanized and, as a result, experience prejudice and hostility too often feel resentment and even hate against those who dehumanize them. (I plead guilty to that!)  That, in turn, causes victims to act aggressively, sometimes in collective ways, which helps to reinforce the attitudes of their dehumanizers.  In brief, victims of hate crimes sometimes hate back.  

Of course, one of the reasons why the hated hate the haters is that the haters' crimes are too often punished lightly, if at all because they are not treated as hate crimes.  I can hardly think of a better example than the driver who injures or kills a cyclist by running him or her off the road and gets off scot-free.

Why Do Most Bike Thieves Get Away With It?

In today's Los Angeles Times, an editorial writer asked the question on the minds of many cyclists:

"Why are cities allowing bicycle theft to go virtually unpunished?"

The editorial points out something that most of us already know:  Bike theft simply isn't a high priority, if it's a priority at all, for most police departments.  There are a variety of reasons, valid or not, for this.  One is that police tend to concentrate on high-profile, high-value crimes.  So a stolen Maserati gets more attention than a missing Masi, possibly because insurance companies and lawyers are likely to have similar priorities.  

Another reason might be one a police officer expressed to me:  "Well, if you have a good lock and insurance policy, you can replace your bike."  This is true, up to a point:  Most policies--whether from lock makers or insurance companies, have deductibles.  But, even if a bike's owner is reimbursed for its full value, he or she may not be able to replace the stolen bike with another like it, especially if it is a custom or discontinued model. 

Even if a cyclist is reimbursed for the full price he or she paid for the bike, that amount of money probably won't buy as good a bike as the one that was taken, especially if the bike is more than a couple of years old.   And, of course, the deductibles and depreciation mean that the cyclist is likely to get considerably less than he or she paid for the bike.

From Priceconomics

What that means is that the newly-bikeless rider will buy a lower-quality bike than the one that was stolen--that is, if he or she buys another bike at all.  The LA Times editorial points out that according to one study, 7 percent of bike-theft victims in Montreal never replace their bikes.

The article makes a point that for many cyclists (such as yours truly), not having a bike is not merely an inconvenience.  An increasing number of people, mainly in cities, are depending on their bikes for everyday transportation.   Most of us aren't rich:  According to a Federal government survey cited in the editorial, the people most likely to cycle (or, for that matter, walk) to work, school or errands--or simply to get around--are those with household incomes of less than $10,000 a year.  That group of people is likely to include, in addition to low-wage workers, the unemployed, retirees and students.  

Also in that group  are many who make their livings on their bicycles.  For a year, I was one.  In nearly every city--and in some suburban and even rural areas--there is an army of folks who deliver everything from documents to dim sum on their wheels.  For them, losing their bikes is catastrophic.

And they, as often as not, are the least able to afford to buy another bike of any kind.  In much the same way that Kim Kardashian being robbed of 10 million dollars' worth of jewelry is not going to affect her lifestyle as much as the average person is affected by losing the watch he or she wears every day, the guy (or woman) who loses a Porsche can more easily afford to replace it than the delivery person who purchased a Peugeot U-08 from a tag sale.

That, I believe, might be the most important "take away" from that L.A. Times editorial.  It may be that law enforcement authorities still see bicyclists losing their bikes as kids losing their toys but someone whose luxury sports car is stolen as the victim of a "real" crime.  Unless that changes, bike theft will be a mostly-unsolved crime and bike thefts will continue to be under-reported.

A Crash By Any Other Name

This happened at a bicycle race in Matamoros, Mexico on 1 June 2008. One cyclist was killed.  Ironically, "Matamoros" means "Kill Moors" in Spanish.  (From VeloWorld)

A few years ago, a man used his SUV to run over five people on Long Island after getting into a fight with one of them.  He fled the scene of the accident.

Tell me:  What's wrong with the above passage?

It's in the last word:  accident.  The last time I checked my Oxford English Dictionary, none of the definitions of the word "accident" included intention, volition or causality.  Perhaps I should look again, just in case my memory is getting fuzzy.

Yet no less than the New York Times--and, presumably, the Nassau County Police Department-- used that word to characterize the incident.

Now, you might say that my perceptions are colored (clouded?) by being a writer and English instructor. Still, I contend that words are powerful, and the ones that are chosen shape the way people perceive whatever is being described.  And people's responses, or lack of them, are a result of their perceptions.

The Long Island man's use of his SUV as a weapon of mass destruction certainly wasn't the first--and probably won't be the last--time such an incident is referred to as an "accident."  It's also not the only kind of non-random collision that has been, or will be, so misnamed.

About two years before the Long Island incident, rapper Foxy Brown is said to have hit two cyclists on West Houston Street in Manhattan.  She originally claimed that her former friend, Ayesha Quattara, was at the wheel, but the testimony of the cyclists who were hit--and Quattara--indicated that the rapper (who is said to be losing her hearing) was the real culprit.  Quattara and the cyclists also said that Brown yelled, "Get out of my way, you dumb white faggots!"

That incident was also listed as an accident (and her friends claimed that she is neither a racist nor a homophobe).  Now, she probably didn't intend to run them down.  However, Brown herself admitted she was agitated as she was racing from one Louis Vuitton store to another before it closed.  So the incident can't be called an "accident" that "happened."

Calling such incidents "accidents", by implication, lessens the culpability of the drivers involved.  It also, I think, causes detectives and others charged with investigating such incidents to think that they are simply terrible fates that could not have been avoided.  I can't help but to believe that anyone who thinks that way will take their investigations less seriously and, perhaps, to be less diligent in them.  

On the other hand, if such incidents were classified as (attempted) homicides or negligence, the cops would be right on them.  Even classifying what Foxy Brown or her friend did as a hate crime would have gotten it more attention than it got as an "accident".