More cyclist victim-blaming

This afternoon I met a friend of a friend, and we discussed her experiences of driving in London, having moved here from China a couple of years ago.  I sympathised with her nightmarish experiences of driving lessons involving the enormous roundabouts in the part of East London where I grew up, and related to her feeling unconfident in navigating London’s often hectic streets.  

She then told me that she’s failed her test four times – but in the same breath, added with outrage that two of these failures had been due to cyclists.  I raised my eyebrows.  It seemed harsh for a driving examiner to fail her for a mistake that was someone else’s fault.  On the other hand, I could imagine a learner driver not having the experience to deal with out-of-the-ordinary situations, and panicking during interactions with other road-users behaving in unexpected or selfish ways, leading her to feel cyclists were to blame for whatever the incident was.  (Notwithstanding the fact that she felt that failing her driving test four times was an injustice against her, rather than an indication of her ability as a driver.)

She elaborated on her story.  The first time she failed, it was because she was asked to pull over when she was in front of two cyclists.  When she indicated and slowed down and, she incorrectly anticipated that they would undertake, and waited in the middle of the road for them to do so.  Instead, the cyclists (correctly) just waited patiently behind her for her to pull in.  She ended up stationary in the middle of the road, for which she was failed. 

I asked what the cyclists had done wrong.  Her response was that if they hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t have failed. 

In the second story, she overtook a cyclist on a relatively quiet road.  The examiner soon afterwards asked her to take the next left – which she immediately did without checking her mirrors, cutting up the cyclist who was now just behind her, and who she’d now forgotten about. 

I asked how the cyclist was to blame for her cutting in front of him without looking.  Her response was that he should have used a different road.  I said, ‘What, the other London roads, with no cars on them?’  To which she responded ‘yes’, before going on to say that on a policy level, “They” shouldn’t be permitted on “Our” streets, thus enabling better overall road safety . 

I didn’t ask her any further about why she used the words ‘them’ and ‘us’, or about her use of the possessive ‘our’ – ie why she thought the road belonged to her, but not to cyclists.  But I was quite sarcastic in pointing out that she blamed the cyclist for her own driving test failure, even though it was her behind the wheel, and furthermore it was she who nearly killed the cyclist.  However, she remained adamant that the cyclist was at fault, and that she had done nothing wrong.  

For her, the idea that the cyclist must have been the one in the wrong was closely tied to the idea that cyclists don’t belong on the road.  This gave her the right to drive exactly as she pleased, as cyclists are only temporarily permitted to ride there by the good grace and patience of the car drivers who legitimately inhabit it (ie her). 

The explicitly espoused views that 1)  car drivers are the natural owners of the road, and 2)  cyclists are in an ‘other’ category that has no rights either as traffic or as human beings, seem to be heavily connected, and apparently remain prevalent among London road-users.