Blamed At Any Speed

On every kind of thoroughfare from Interstate highways to dirt roads, drivers exceed the speed limit.  To be fair, it's easy to do on a deserted rural lane or when all of the drivers around you are over the limit.  I imagine that sometimes drivers think that 5 or 10 miles per hour over the speed limit isn't much, especially if that threshold is 40 MPH or greater.

What people often fail to realize, however, is how much more harm they can do by going "just over" the speed limit.  As an example, William Davies piloted his Ford Focus at 48 MPH on a road where the posted limit was 40 MPH.  Had he been a compliant driver, he would have been traveling three meters (about ten feet) slower per second when he approached an intersection in the Welsh town of Newport.

At an intersection, a few feet, let alone meters, can mean, literally, the difference between life and death--especially for someone crossing the juncture without the protection of 4000 pounds of metal. 

A report issued after the court's inquest said as much.  The excessive speed "more than minimally contributed" to Mr. Davies striking--and killing--16-year-old Joshua Fletcher.

Joshua Fletcher R.I.P.

The teenager, who was said to be a talented rugby player and was studying to be a mechanic, was riding his bike to school on 16 October 2020 when Mr. Davies struck him.  The impact fractured his skull and caused multiple brain injuries.  He was declared dead at the scene.

You may have noticed a key word in the paragraph before the previous one: "minimally."  I can't help but to think that the report's author was a lawyer or had one by his or her side:  It couldn't have been chosen more carefully or deliberately.  That word allowed them to say "but" without saying "but."

To wit:  According to that report, Fletcher crossed the intersection "carelessly" because he was distracted by the headphones he was wearing.  OK, that's fair enough:  I never have ridden with headphones.  Also, the report noted, he wasn't wearing a helmet. 

On the basis of those factors, the report, in essence, said that Joshua Fletcher--who rode his bike to school because he was late whenever he took the bus--was responsible for his own death.

Now, I am not a coroner or forensic scientist, and I have never had children (though I've taught and worked with them in other ways), so take what I am about to say for what it's worth:  Rare is the circumstance when a child, or even a teenager, should be blamed for his or her own death.  Even if we can agree that Fletcher "should have" worn a helmet and "shouldn't have" worn headphones while riding, he didn't deserve to die for making choices teenagers, left to their own devices, would make.

(I rode without a helmet as a teenager because the only ones available were the "leather hairnets"--like the old football helmets--or lids from other sports like hockey.  And I rode without headphones because, well, we didn't have them in those days.  But would I have gone bareheaded and with my ears plugged if helmets and phones were available?)

I am not saying that William Davies was some sort of homicidal maniac.  He, too, made a careless choice--arguably more careless, since he had those 4000 pounds of metal and, one assumes, more wisdom than a sixteen-year-old would have.  

Perhaps the point is not to assign blame but, rather, to look at what leads people to such tragedies.  Of course cyclists should be encouraged to wear helmets and not to wear headphones.  But drivers also need to be aware that they are, in essence, guiding a lethal weapon whose destructive force increases exponentially with incremental increases in speed.

Cyclists Killed, Victims Blamed

This blog is twelve years old.  During that time, I've argued--fairly consistently, I believe--that bike lanes and other physical forms of "bicycle infrastructure" aren't, by themselves, enough to make cycling safer or to encourage people to trade one pedal and four wheels for two pedals and two (or three) wheels, if only for short trips.

The most important form of "bicycle infrastructure" is, I believe, attitudes and policies and about cycling and cyclists.  As I've done before, I'm going to make a comparison between victims of sexual crimes and victims of motorists' aggression or carelessness against cyclists. (I've been both.)  In both cases, victims have been blamed, implicitly or explicitly, for what happened to them.

Photo by Tim Grist

Although some attitudes have changed, it's still not unusual for some people to wonder aloud what someone "was doing on the street at that time of night" or was wearing at the time she, he or they were attacked. Or, worse, to blame the victim's sexual orientation or gender presentation for the attack.  And the ways in which too many police officers treat victims re-traumatizes them and discourages others from reporting attacks against them.

Similarly, when an intoxicated or distracted driver runs down a cyclist, or when any driver uses a bike lane as a parking or passing lane, the cyclist or bicycling is, too often blamed, again, whether explicitly or implicitly.  The former happened after a woman driving an SUV in Houston struck and killed an eight-year-old boy on a bicycle.  In response, the Texas Department of Public Safety issued a statement that he "was riding his bike in an area that isn't safe for pedestrians or people riding bikes."

As it turns out, the boy was crossing an intersection where the driver had a stop sign.  So, in brief, the Texas DPS blamed the boy for riding--to school?  home?--as so many other kids, and adults, do.

The bike- and cyclist-blaming is also extended to users of any form of transportation that isn't an automobile.  Pedestrians have also been similarly held culpable for crossing a street when a driver blew through a red light.  And, in Bloomington, Indiana--home to Indiana University--a student was killed while riding a scooter in a bike lane.  How did the city respond?  It decided to limit scooter use.

The real infrastructure improvement, if you will, the city needs is for its planners and policy makers to shift their goals away from moving as many cars or trucks as possible as quickly as possible from one point to another. In other words, they need to stop thinking that the car is king--and to spread the message that motorists share space with cyclists, pedestrians, scooter-users--and folks in wheelchairs or walkers.

To be fair, just about every other US municipality, even if it's deemed "bike friendly," needs to make such a shift. Otherwise, kids riding their bikes to school or adults riding to work or for exercise will be blamed when they're run down by people who drink or text while they drive, or use bike lanes for parking or passing.