Data from nine major North American cities showed that, despite the total number of bike trips tripling between 1977 and 2009, fatalities per 10 million bike trips fell by 65 percentPhotograph by Val Goretsky/Hemera/Thinkstock.
I'm an asshole cyclist. I'm that jerk weaving in and out of?traffic, going the wrong way down a one-way street, and making a left on?red. I'm truly a menace on the road.
But it?s not because I?m on a bike?I'm an asshole on the road no matter what. I?m also a stereotypical Jersey driver, someone who treats speed limits as speed minimums and curses those who disagree. And I'm just as bad as a pedestrian, another jaywalking smartphone zombie oblivious to the world beyond my glowing screen. If I?m moving, I?m an accident waiting to happen.
Biking is my primary means of transportation, so when someone defames cyclists, I feel particularly bad. The fact is, unlike me, most bicyclists are courteous, safe, law-abiding citizens who are quite willing and able to share the road. The?Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia?studied rider habits on some of Philly?s busier streets, using some rough metrics to measure the assholishness of bikers: counting the number of times they rode on sidewalks or went the wrong way on one-way streets. The citywide averages in 2010 were 13 percent for sidewalks and 1 percent for one-way streets at 12 locations where cyclists were observed, decreasing from 24 percent and 3 percent in 2006. There is no reason to believe that Philly has particularly respectful bicyclists?we?re not a city known for?respectfulness, and our disdain for traffic laws is?nationally renowned. Perhaps the simplest answer is also the right one: Cyclists are getting less aggressive.
A recent study?by researchers at Rutgers and Virginia Tech supports that hypothesis. Data from nine major North American cities showed that, despite the total number of bike trips tripling between 1977 and 2009, fatalities per 10 million bike trips fell by 65 percent. While a number of factors contribute to lower accident rates, including increased helmet usage and more bike lanes, less aggressive bicyclists probably helped, too.
Despite such statistics, lots of drivers assume all people on bikes are assholes like me. In doing so, these motorists are making an inductive fallacy, not unlike saying, "Of course he beat me at basketball?he?s?Asian?like Jeremy Lin and Yao Ming." Now, you might be thinking to yourself that you?ve seen more than one or two suicidal cyclists in your day?that these roaches on two wheels are an infestation that?s practically begging to be squished underfoot (and by ?foot? you mean ?my Yukon Denali?).
First off?wow, that is disturbingly violent. Second, your estimate of the number of asshole cyclists and the degree of their assholery is skewed by what behavioral economists like Daniel Kahneman call the?affect heuristic, which is a fancy way of saying that people make judgments by consulting their emotions instead of logic.
The affect heuristic explains how our minds take a difficult question (one that would require rigorous logic to answer) and substitutes it for an easier one. When our emotions get involved, we jump to pre-existing conclusions instead of exerting the mental effort to think of a bespoke answer. The affect heuristic helps explain why birthers still exist even though Obama released his birth certificate?it?s a powerful, negative emotional issue about which lots of people have already made up their minds. When it comes to cyclists, once some clown on two wheels almost kills himself with your car, you furiously decide that bicyclists are assholes, and that conclusion will be hard to shake regardless of countervailing facts, stats, or arguments.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=8a3e8afe4dcf5d573bb79cac8b085afe
shannon de lima joe torre west virginia university michele bachmann jessica biel tim howard west virginia
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