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.