Can't we all just get along?

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

By Scott Fitzgerald

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-The sun is out and so are the bikes! But with the increased cycling traffic, so comes the increase in conflict. You know the story - some motorists think bikes don’t belong on their road, and some bikers think they deserve roadway space so much so that they become aggressive about it. Before too long, we are all climbing the “ladder of inference” or in this case adding more links to the “bicycle chain of inference.” It works like this: one day, a motorist sees an irresponsible biker blow a stop sign and thinks, “that’s disrespectful and unacceptable.”

The next day, another quite respectful cyclist uses the whole lane of traffic since there is no adequate shoulder on the road (perfectly legal), and that motorist says, “ah-ha! There it is again!” and adds a link to the chain. Before too long that motorist is only seeing the disrespectful cyclists and inferring that behavior on all of us. On the other side of the equation that cyclist gets a close buzz by an angry motorist and starts to infer that all drivers are out to get bikers. So on and so forth until we reach an elevated level of conflict. What do we do? Any suggestions?


PERMALINK:
Can't we all just get along? | Planet JH News Article: Single Track Mind

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