The other day, I rode La-Vande, my King of Mercia, to Point Lookout. My ride started under a veil of clouds that didn’t entirely block the sun. So the day was bright enough to be cheerful without the sun bearing down on me.
Later on, though, as the temperature rose, clouds dissipated and the sea acted like a tanning mirror. That, or my skin is more sensitive than it was in my youth.
The ride was pleasant, except for a stretch of Cross Bay Boulevard near the Gateway National Recreation Area. The bike lane that parallels the Boulevard—really just the shoulder of the road with some green paint—gets turned into a passing lane by impatient motorists, of whom there are many: The Boulevard is a long, flat road through residential and semi-rural areas that brings out the wannabe NASCAR champions in too many drivers.
Again, I got to thinking about Japan. There are extensive networks of well-marked and -maintained bike lanes. Many streets in Kyoto and Tokyo also have shared lanes for motor vehicles and cyclists. While riding in both cities (I didn’t get to ride in Osaka) I never was “nudged” out of a shared lane, let alone menaced in a lane set aside for cyclists.
I had long thought that the courtesy I experienced from drivers in France, Italy and other European countries had something to do with the fact that many of those motorists are also, or have recently been, cyclists. Such “dual citizens,” if you will, probably make up a larger portion of the population in those countries than in the US. That is one reason why, in earlier posts, I expressed my belief that educating American drivers, and the general public, about cycling —for example, why it’s safer for us to cross an intersection against a red light than to wait for a green if there’s no cross-traffic—would do as much as, or more than, “infrastructure” to make cycling safer and thus encourage more people to see it as a viable transportation option.
But the kind of courtesy, which at times bordered on deference, I experienced in the Land of the Rising Sun went beyond even what I experienced in Europe. It occurs to me that it has much to do with some basic cultural attitudes that, perhaps, can’t be taught in a country where one of the founding principles is individualism. I mean, how else can I account for the fact that the kind of motorist behavior to which I was subjected on Cross Bay Boulevard seems not to even occur to anyone driving along Higashikujo.
