Riders in the abyss

Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves is a tale of a haunting.  A house is infested with voids that exist between its walls;  the adventurer who enters them finds a parallel universe of eerie nothingness, which slowly but brutally consumes the inhabitant through its very lack of spatial and temporal substance.  These non-spaces are an affront to the ‘legitimate’ sites of domesticity, which characterise the rest of the ‘normal’ rooms in the house. 

The fear of being trapped in a parallel world, where one can see – but not be seen by – the familiar, is a potent one, which has been repeatedly articulated in popular culture.  Honey I Shrunk the Kids, 1960s TV series Randall and Hopkirk Deceased, and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, all feature protagonists who can look in on the real world they have left behind, but who are invisible to their loved ones. 

Neverwhere is particularly important, because it draws an explicit political link between invisibility and powerlessness.  The unseen inhabitants of Gaiman’s ‘London Below’ represent the homeless and otherwise disenfranchised poor of the city, whose plight is ignored both by the authorities, and by individuals whose personal circumstances create them as ‘recognised’ citizens. 

It is also this expression of powerlessness that makes tales of being ignored such an important theme in children’s books, such as David McKee’s Not Now Bernard, which play on children’s sense of insignificance in an adult-dominated world. 

The same logic is seen in the shanty towns on the outskirts of cities in developing countries.  Vast groups of people dwell in un-titled properties, in places that are not bestowed with legitimacy by the authorities, and that rarely even feature on official maps. 

But every day, all urban cyclists become Bernard;  become Hopkirk;  are thrust into London Below, and into the abyss within the walls of the House of Leaves;  occupy uncharted shanty-territory.

Our mental constructions of road-space divide our streets into different regions.  One region is the large block of space in the middle of each lane, which is used predominantly by motor vehicles.   Collectively, motor vehicles dialectically create this space as legitimate, whilst individual drivers simultaneously become the beneficiaries of this legitimacy whenever they inhabit that space as they use the roads. 

The two other regions of the roads are the space between the kerb and the nearest car, and the gap between the cars in adjacent lanes.  In other words, these regions are defined as the spaces in between motor traffic;  not as a space in their own right, but as a region that lacks traffic. 

It is these regions – undocumented, unlegitimised, even non-extistent - that are, necessarily, inhabited by cyclists.  (They are given short shrift if they cycle in the middle of the lane;  besides, it is the area next to the kerb that contains the cycle lane.)

One of the main reasons given by motorists for cutting up, knocking over, and otherwise besmirching cyclists, is that they did not see them.  Public information campaigns urge motorists to be vigilant, and ‘look out for’ cyclists;  others entreat cyclists to make themselves more visible to motorists, either by making themselves brighter (through hi-vis apparel and lights), or by staying out of motorists’ blind spots. 

But until we collectively reconfigure the way in which we conceive the physical space of the roads, cyclists will, by definition, remain in a permanent blind spot.  Not a bind spot created by the positioning of wing-mirrors, but by inhabiting a part of the road that simply does not exist. 

Cycling through Kafka's Castle:

Why cyclists bend the rules

Motorists don’t like cyclists breaking the rules.  They argue that cyclists will only garner respect on the roads when they stop jumping reds and riding on the pavement.  Many cyclists take the reverse stance, demanding equal respect with motorists before they conform to the same strictures. 

This is a manifestation of the classic ‘rights vs responsibilities’ argument – the idea that your ‘right’ to express certain freedoms, and to be treated to a certain standard, should be in direct proportion to how well you discharge your ‘responsibility’ to behave as a good citizen.  

But this line of reasoning is misleading.  The idea that everyone should be expected to behave (and be treated) in the same way is based on the false assumption that everyone inhabits the same road.  They do not.  Motorists and cyclists have fundamentally different experiences of using the road, which inevitably leads them to develop very different road-use behaviours.  These are rarely examined outside the confines of moral notions of how either party should behave, obscuring the real issues at play.

It is a truism that our cities are designed for cars.  However, while a great deal has been written about the implications for city-wide mobility, consumption, class and gender, etc, little has been said about the environment within roads that distinguishes between their various inhabitants. 

When drivers get behind the wheel, they find themselves in a seamless landscape.  Roads all join up with each other.  Signs always point in the right direction.  Maps all show you exactly what roads you can go down, and which direction you can go in.  (Albeit with the odd glitch in new satnav technology in recent years.)  The most difficult obstacle encountered by motorists is probably finding where they are allowed to park, in the case of zones requiring residential permits – but even parking is usually pretty clearly signalled with lines painted on the roads. 

Cyclists are not afforded such luxuries.  Bike lanes frequently stop dead at physical obstructions, or just disappear without warning.  (This phenomenon is so prevalent that whole books have been published containing nothing but pictures of absurd cycle lane cock-ups.)  Blue signposts marked ‘Quiet route’ lead unwary cyclists into backstreet shortcuts – only to leave them stranded in the middle of nowhere when the breadcrumb trail of signs runs out.  Standard A-Z maps (as opposed to specialised bike lane maps) display areas prohibited to cars – but don’t include contra-flow cycle lanes down one-way streets, or alleys that cyclists may (legitimately) cut through.

Parking is a minefield.  Street cycle racks are rare, meaning that street furniture must first be scouted out, and then assessed for its probable legality (“Am I allowed to chain my bike to these railings?  How about these ones…?”);  its security (“Could my bike be lifted over the top of this sign…?”); and finally its physical availability, as you embark upon a grim bodily struggle with a street lamp that’s just too thick to wrap your lock around.

The upshot is that motorists never have to think about the space they move through.  They never have to make split-second decisions about how to interpret mixed messages about how they’re expected to drive along a particular road – everything is handed to them on a plate. 

Cyclists meanwhile are forced to constantly question how they are going to navigate an obstacle;  to second-guess whether a cycle lane that directs them from the road onto the pavement will lead to them being shouted at by pedestrians 50 yards down the line;   to query every few minutes what is being asked of them by the authorities, and whether they are responding in the correct way. 

Cars drive through cities designed by Euclid.  Cyclists ride through cities that were designed by MC Escher, and which are administered by Franz Kafka. 

This article is not a straightforward justification of law-breaking by people who have been hard done-by.  It is a critique of those who get surprised when cyclists behave as though they exist below the radar.

When a group of people inhabits a world that demands constant reflection on what behaviour is required of them, they inherently develop a more fluid and immediate form of cognitive and physical engagement with their surroundings.  This blurs – even transcends – the more bureaucratic elements of the laws that are designed to govern the presumably legitimate heirs of this landscape.