Visibility and victim-blaming

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. 

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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.