The
early days – the car as a dangerous oddity
Traction engines are like steam trains that
drive on roads. They became available in
Britain during the 1850s, when they were mainly used to transport heavy
agricultural loads. In 1861, in response
to this new menace, the Locomotives on Highways Act was passed. It set the world's first ever speed limit, at
10mph.
Four years
later, the Locomotives Act 1865 set the speed limit at 2mph in towns, and 4mph
in the country, and required a minimum driving crew of three - one to steer,
one to stoke the engine with coal, and one to walk 60 yards ahead waving a red
flag or lantern. For this reason, the
law became known as the 'Red Flag Act'.
These laws
were passed because, since driving was considered to be a dangerous thing to
do, drivers were seen to have a duty to the public to announce their
presence. The burden was on them not to
injure anyone during the course of their imposing and outlandish activities, by
making themselves highly visible to other, more vulnerable, road users.
Fast-forward
150 years, and the motor vehicle is seen as the rightful heir of the
highway. Pedestrians and cyclists are
permitted to be present only by the good grace and magnanimity of motorists,
and on the understanding that they are temporary visitors – outsiders. They enter at their own risk – and indeed
there is a constant and high risk presented by vehicles moving at 30pmh and
faster.
The
double-whammy of automobiles’ presumed right to the road, and the physical
danger they present to the human body, is set against the backdrop of an
increasingly risk-sensitive society. One
consequence of this is that cyclists are required to take increasingly burdensome
precautions to make their presence on the roads socially acceptable.
These precautionary
measures come in two forms: physical
protection in case they’re hit by cars, and equipment to make themselves more
visible to drivers. We’re going to
investigate the latter.
Hi-vis culture
There’s a
huge variety of visibility apparatus on the market, and it seems to grow every
year. It includes hi-vis bands,
ankle-clips, bag-covers, vests and even whole jackets, and tape stuck to bike
frames; reflective silver patches on
trousers, tops, jackets, shoes, gloves, and bags; plastic reflector panels on the front and
rear of the frame, on pedals and on wheels;
lights on the front and rear, and integrated into bags and helmets.
It can be
argued that these are simply common-sense measures; that indeed provide valuable protection, by
making it easier for cyclist to be seen.
However, hi-vis
and reflective materials are not designed to protect cyclists from some
neutral, abstract danger, or even a danger that is inherent to cycling. (Unlike helmets are – at least to some extent.) They are specifically designed to make
cyclists visible to motorists.
Most bike
lights used in cities are for being seen by others, not for lighting the road
ahead. More strikingly, reflective
material is only activated by the presence of headlights – the passive cyclist
is involuntarily 'switched on' at the behest of the motorist.
Reversal of responsibility
Furthermore,
wearing hi-vis is frequently not a precautionary choice made on the part of the
individual cyclist, but an imperative imposed by car-driving (car-driven?)
society. Indeed, by failing to adopt the
designated prison-uniform of the highway, cyclists are increasingly accused of
recklessness with their own lives - and even endangering others'.
Extraordinarily,
there was a recent court case involving a child who was hit by a car when
walking home along a country road. The
insurance company involved refused to pay compensation because she was not
wearing hi vis clothing, and was hence to blame for her own injuries.
This is a
reflection of a perverse situation, where the onus of responsibility is on
cyclists and pedestrians to ensure that they are not injured, as opposed to the
responsibility being on the motorist not to cause injury to others. After all, the motorist is the one doing something
dangerous: driving a big, heavy, hard,
object at high speeds - and is the one who causes injury to cyclists, and not
vice versa.
This is a
perfect reversal of the logic of the Red Flag Act, in which the individual
creating the danger was responsible for mitigating the hazard they posed. The point here is not that there's anything
especially great about preserving arbitrary mid 19th century legislation. It simply illustrates how the power of the
motor industry is so strong, and so pervasive, that it has not only repealed a
law, but utterly reversed social expectations.
It also
highlights the unreasonable nature of the demands of hi-vis culture; the logic is that of a stab-victim being
accused by the perpetrator of not ducking fast enough.
Victim-blaming
Here there
are strong parallels with misogynist victim-blaming culture, where women who
have been sexually assaulted are accused of having brought violence upon
themselves by their clothing or behaviour, rather than the blame being laid at
the feet of the actual perpetrator of the offence.
Of course I’m
not equating the experience of sexual assault with traffic accidents, and of
course the types of trauma involved are very different – I just want to note certain
similarities in cultural responses to them both.
Victim-blaming
in sexual assault cases is often justified by framing it as ‘common sense’ that
women who dress in revealing clothing should anticipate the unwelcome
consequences of doing so. This is often
equated with the argument that you’re at greater risk of being robbed if you
flash your valuables about in the street.
One reason
that this argument is nonsense (as well as grossly offensive), is that there is
a deeply rooted culture of shaming and stigmatising women who are deemed to
have dressed ‘provocatively’ (an ugly and topsy-turvy turn of phrase), in a way
that simply doesn’t exist for people who leave their wallet poking out of their
back pocket.
Furthermore,
despite precautionary warnings to
potential victims, victims of knifepoint robbery are unlikely to be asked if
the robbery was their fault after the event (at least not immediately). Contrast this with the response to victims of
sexual assault, who are routinely asked by police about their dress, state of
intoxication, etc, when reporting crimes.
The same response is encountered by cyclists, who are frequently interrogated
about what they may have done to cause a collision, rather than being neutrally
asked “What happened?”.
I was once
knocked off my bike in broad daylight by an oncoming van that swerved into my
side
of the road at 20mph without indicating.
I hit him head-on, went over his bonnet, and headplanted onto the
road. (His first comment was the
immortal line: “Sorry mate, I didn’t see
you.”) He admitted immediately that he
was entirely to blame, and when we met weeks later so he could pay for the
damage to my bike, he was clearly relieved he hadn’t killed me, and that I
hadn’t gone through his insurance company for full compensation.
When I
returned to work, the first words from my boss’s mouth were “So, was it your
fault?” When I mentioned it to my mum, she
asked if I’d been wearing hi-vis clothing before she even knew the
circumstances of the collision. It’s
problematic to directly compare road traffic incidents, where joint liability
is much more at issue than in more straightforward ‘perpetrator / victim’
scenarios such as most robberies.
However, I would still argue that cyclists are regarded with undue
suspicion of guilt, even when they are blameless victims, due to being unfairly
stigmatised as a collective category.
* * * * *
Clearly all
groups that use public space must make certain compromises in order to cohabit
our cities. If cyclists are to use the
roads they must be visible to other road users. It’s not sufficient to critique
victim-blaming whilst overlooking the need for all road-users to be able to see
and interpret each others’ presence.
But how
visible is visible? Is visibility in the
eye of the beholder? What level of
precaution is it reasonable to expect people to take? How can we achieve a fair but meaningful
balance of responsibilities for seeing and being seen? When we consider these questions, we must take
into account the underlying imbalance of social and physical power on the
roads, and the imbalance in the expectations placed on different road users in
our general culture.
