Attacked Because He Is A Cyclist?

 These days, when I ride into Manhattan, I am most likely to use the Williamsburg Bridge.  One reason is convenience:  It’s closest to the places on either side of the river from, to or through which I am likely to ride.  Another is habit:  The Brooklyn Bridge bike lane, which opened a couple of years ago, is better than I expected it to be.  But before it became available, the Williamsburg had widest lanes and easiest access of the East River crossings.

Time was, though, when I avoided the Williamsburg.  When I lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn, the Brooklyn was more convenient.  But the neighborhoods on either side of the Williamsburg were, at the time, rough.  I knew a few people who were attacked and their bicycles stolen.

As if such crimes weren’t intimidating enough, a new wave of attacks—like the one I’m about to mention—is targeting cyclists.

Early this morning, a 62-year-old man was riding through Chicago’s South Loop.  For no apparent reason, someone attacked him with a construction sign. Then the perp beat the man with his bicycle.

While the methods and weapons used vary, one thing that the aforementioned incident has in common with others I’ve heard about recently is that police and reporters have said there was “no apparent motive.” I can’t help but to think, however that the man in Chicago, and other cyclists, are being attacked because they are cyclists.

Cyclist Shot For Stopping To Help

It's bad enough that there are four guns for every three people in the United States of America.  Even worse is the potential for suicide and other kinds of self-harm, and for crimes that wouldn't have happened otherwise.  I am thinking, of course, about mass shootings, of which we've had three for every two days here in the US, and mass killings, nearly all of which happen by gunfire and of which we are on track to have nearly twice as many in 2023 as in any previous year.   

But I also have another kind of tragedy in mind:  the kind that unfolded just before noon yesterday in New Haven, Connecticut.  A man was cycling down Chapel Street, between Ferry and Poplar.  He stopped to help a driver who'd fallen asleep at the wheel. Another driver started to argue with the cyclist.  Then he shot him.

The cyclist went to the emergency room and is expected to survive.  But it makes me think about the times I've stopped to help people while I was riding.  What if someone else took issue, whether for a rational reason or not?  And what if that person had a
weapon? 

From Edmunds

For that matter, I have to wonder whether, one day, some motorist who resents my presence on "his" road might decide to make his point with the tip of a bullet? 

But I'm A Rider, Not A Fighter!

Make love, not war.  But be prepared for both.

I don't remember where I first read or heard that aphorism. Perhaps it was a slogan for a store that sold sex toys and guns.  Now, where I would have found such a store, I don't know...

Seriously, though:  I have long felt that the bicycle is one of the greatest "weapons for peace", if you will.  If nothing else, it could help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels if more people start pedaling instead of driving to their jobs and schools, to shop or just for fun. That, in turn, would lessen the likelihood of a war over finite resources.

Also, I think cycling breaks down at least some of the social barriers that are created, or at least fortified, when people are encased in shields of metal and glass.  Although some cyclists play games of one-upsmanship when it comes to equipment or the level of another cyclist's skills (actual or percieved) and physical fitness (again, a or p), I think it's harder to feel superior to, or to be made to feel inferior to, other cyclists when one is on a bike.

That could be the reason why, in my experience, cyclists are generally more accepting of other people's differences than other people.  That may be a reason why our politics tend to tack a bit more to the left than average.

Still, we face the reality of war--or, at least confrontation, if not violence--just as anyone else does.  Back when crime rates were higher here in NYC, I knew of cyclists who were jumped for their bikes, or who fell victim to thieves who strung fishing line between two poles at just the right height to snag a cyclist.  Some perps also scattered debris on streets or created other obstacles to stop or divert cyclists and snatched their steeds from them.

In those days, one had to use particular caution when entering or exiting the Williamsburgh Bridge:  neither the Brooklyn neighborhood for which it is named, not the area on the Manhattan side of the bridge, had begun to gentrify. Two old riding buddies, and another acquaintance, lost top-of-the-line bikes when approaching or leaving the span.

Concerns about crime were not, however, new to cyclists in those days.  In fact, our peers from a century earlier also had to think about highway robbers, sexual predators and other predators.  Such criminals, it seems, were enough of a concern that one Marcus Tindal wrote "Self Protection On A Cycle" for Pearson's, a magazine that, apparently, was a more left-leaning and even more literary version of The Atlantic or Harper's.

In his article, Tindal outlines the various ways in which a cyclist can fall prey to thieves, thugs and perverts--and how to fight back. Here is an illustration from what is, to my mind, the most interesting part:

Tindal shows us that the bicycle itself can be one of the best weapons for self-defense.  Interestingly, many of the illustrations are of women on bikes, reflecting the cultural changes that the bicycle engendered (pun intended).  And some of the advice is, shall we say, quaint--like the suggestion 

More than a century after its publication, someone turned the article's illustrations into an enjoyable series of animated GIFs.

They Didn't Give Him The Rope But He Got Snagged

Time was, not so long ago, when riding in some New York City parks was a risky proposition.  A few old riding buddies and training partners were mugged for their machines when they rounded the tree-bordered turns in Central and Fort Tryon  Parks, or when transversing Union Square.  I think a group of young men tried to do the same to--or simply harass-- me in Prospect Park:  a mob of them formed a human chain across the roadway.  Being as young and angry as I was, I pedaled harder and missed being entangled by, or breaking, their arms and legs by a couple of hair-breadths.

My close encounter came a bit more than two decades ago, not long after I first moved to Brooklyn and crime in New York was just beginning to decline from its historically high levels. (The crack epidemic was starting to wind down.)  Ever since those days, the main things cyclists have had to worry about when riding in Prospect (or, for that matter, Central) Park are collisions and other accidents.  In the few times I've ridden Prospect during the past few years, I've felt, if anything, safer than in most other places where I ride, as it's closed to traffic and seems well-patrolled.
 


However, today I heard about an incident that many of us believed to have become a thing of the past--or of which younger cyclists and more recent arrivals to the city have no memory. A cyclist has spent two days in Lutheran Hospital with six broken ribs and fractured elbow.  Even when there's been little or no crime in the park, I seem to hear about such an unfortunate turn of events at least once every year.  However, the way he crashed is what harkens back to the bad old days:  Witnesses say he was caught in a rope stretched across the roadway, fastened to a tree on one side and a fire hydrant on the other.  Those witnesses also say they saw three young men standing by the hydrant when the cyclist got caught in the rope and flipped over his handlebars.

From what I'm told and what I've read, the police report says that the cyclist ran over the rope. If the cyclist ended up immobilized in a bed in Lutheran, that can't be true.  I've ridden over ropes before, even the kind used to moor ships to docks, when I was riding skinny sew up tires.  And, let me tell you, I was riding pretty fast. (It was during my racing days.)  I was jarred the way one would be in running over, say, a speed bump or other similarly-sized and -shaped object, and it might have impaired my balance for a nanosecond.  But it didn't even come close to causing me to flip over my handlebars or to even lose control of my bike.

If indeed the cyclist crashed into a rope pulled across the roadway, that would be disturbing enough.  But it would upset me even more to know that the police treated the case so cavalierly, as they often did to other cyclists who were assaulted or robbed back in the bad old days.