On the other side of the cycling divide, a mountain-biking Colorado neighbor encounters some ATVs in the back country — and is grateful.
After writing that sentence, I remembered reading a study that described how people typically perceive motorized vehicles differently than bicycles in traffic.
Drivers and cyclists alike tend to refer to cars rather than drivers when describing driving behavior: "The SUV nearly ran me off the road!"
Likewise, they see people rather than the conveyance when there's no motor: "That biker ran right through the light!"
In one case, the vehicle stands for the person. In the other, the more visible person (or class of persons) is connected directly to the behavior. Put another way, drivers may see dozens of cars roll through stop signs each day and never attribute the practice to themselves or to drivers as a group. They see one cyclist do it, and the infraction applies to all bikers.
That's not necessarily a bad thing for cyclists, however, because we are also more likely to be seen as vulnerable humans rather than remotely piloted drones. There's likely a signal to the brain that indicates caution or empathy for the rider when we're not behaving like idiots. The flow of vehicle traffic, in contrast, is like so much wallpaper.
But to get the full effect, Robert Sullivan advocates for cyclists to "act like people and stop acting like cars."
Then there's this experiment in which the researcher found that driver behavior was different around helmeted cyclists compared to non-helmeted riders. Cyclists without helmets were given more room when the vehicles passed. Was that because they were seen more as fellow humans, as less experienced and, therefore, more likely to act unpredictably? Or was it because a helmeted (and perhaps lycra-clad) rider looks more like a car?
