On this tour, we didn’t experience bad motorist behavior until we left Lancaster County heading East. The closer we got to Philly, the more impatient and aggressive the drivers.

Welcome and thanks for commenting!

I agree. In my experience, the majority of the incivility I experience (and record on video) stems directly from that sense of entitlement (I also call it territorialism). I see it time and again in rear-facing video — honking and shouting from a driver who never even had to change lanes on a multi-lane road and was not the least bit affected by my presence on the road. I suspect that is also a factor in the “must pass” behavior where a motorist passes unsafely within 50 feet of a stop sign or traffic light.

I like your reference to the Law of Inverse Appreciation. So true!

I’ve lived in Central PA for about 5 years, after spending most of my life in the mid-west, and have come to the conclusion that mid-Atlantic drivers are among the worst in the country. Specifically, in central PA many drivers are passive-aggressive. Here are a few aggressive things that happen to me almost every time I get on my bike:

Passing at all costs. No matter how little space the motorist has, and regardless of the cyclist’s speed, he will attempt to pass.
I’m often passed at intersections. I make it a point to take the lane at stop signs. Often, motorists will pull up next to me, in the left lane, even if there’s a car coming the other direction.
Horn honking, yelling, other cowardly harassment. This isn’t as frequent as it used to be, but it still happens.

The passive stuff:

If I’m waiting to cross a road, or to turn onto it, motorists will often stop, blocking traffic from one direction, to wave me across. If I end up in front of them, they’ll pass at any cost.
At 4-way stops, even if I get there after a motorist, they will often wait for me and then wave me across. If I’m turning and end up in front of them, they will probably pass at any cost.

It appears that many motorists in PA simply don’t understand the traffic code or right of way. Navigating intersections with hand gestures and eye contact is the norm, for example. As for speed, only the State Police are authorized to use RADAR in Pennsylvania and they simply don’t patrol most of the back roads. There is, quite literally, no incentive to obey the speed limit.

I think some part of the ‘civility’ deficit we may experience as cyclists comes from a sense of entitlement. Drivers feel entitled to go fast, pass unsafely, because the culture is that roads are for motor vehicles, not for cyclists or buggies. It’s “their road”.

Where the culture is different, where cyclists or buggies are common, even accepted, the shared use of the common road is more civil. We saw this difference clearly in the Netherlands.

Colin Fletcher’s “Law of Inverse Appreciation” comes into play as well.
He states this as: “The less there is between you and the environment, the more you appreciate the environment.” It’s not just the steel and glass of cars that come between the occupants and the environment.Speed itself is a barrier. The difference in speed is dehumanizing. Those slower road users, those un-entitled interlopers are not fellow people. They are just “in the way”.

Jon M

Good comment/question.

I struggled with this for a long time—the pressure to go fast vs the desire to go slow.

What helped me was observation of the system. First of all, bicyclists are the least cause of delay in the system. The biggest cause is other motorists, followed by traffic lights, then more minor things like buses, garbage trucks, cars making turns, etc. With that perspective, you realize a solo bicyclist couldn’t cause significant delay if she tried.

I’ve had drivers pass me in a huff before a stretch of 2-lane road only to have me coasting behind them 2 miles later though a school zone. They didn’t get any farther ahead in 2 miles because of all the cars in front of them.

So taking that into consideration first, yes, there is a give and take. I advocate and practice “control and release” When that isn’t feasible, I pull over to allow cars to pass if it feels like they have waited too long. I have a fairly low tolerance for having drivers behind me, this is less about holding them up (I’ll see them at the next red light) than knowing there is a span of seconds before which an impatient driver will do something stupid and put me at risk.

A note about intersection queues. Most of the time, I manage my shifting (and we teach this in CyclingSavvy) to accelerate though intersections. The bicycle is such an efficient vehicle, I often accelerate faster than cars and usually can effortlessly glide through an intersection at the speed of the cars in front of me. However, there are times I don’t want to exert any effort, so I may modify my route or pull over until the green light is stale and go behind the queue. Often, if I’m first at a red light where a lot of traffic collects, I’ll go through the intersection and pull into a convenience store driveway to let the pack go by, then come out behind them on an empty road.

Being aware of the terrain and the traffic dynamics is super important! For example, on one route, between 2 sections of narrow road, there is a short section of wide road. I approach the wide section anticipating that I will pull aside and slow to make sure any cars that have collected back there can pass me. This is especially important since the next section is uphill.

The balance of courtesy, safety, reality, perceptions, etc. becomes second nature for a mindful cyclist. I achieved a relaxed comfort by adopting a healthy perspective of speed, delay and myself as an equal road user. Appropriate courtesy comes from a positive place (“I can do this to help you out”), not a negative one (“I’m inferior and should get out of your way”). That’s critical and missing for the vast majority of cyclists.

Oddly enough, I found that the more relaxed I became, the less harassment I seemed to experience… and the little harassment I get now rarely bothers me. For every one of those, I have at least 10 overtly friendly exchanges with other drivers.

Tailwinds!

I once heard in a psych class that there are people who manipulate the world around them and people who find their way into the world around them, disturbing as little as possible. As cyclists, we have to be some of each, I think–assertive but careful. Aware of the terrain but also aware of our role in it. What do you think?

Kevin’s comment:
Guerrilla marketing is good, and I particularily liked the Youtube “Free delivery with second order.” That’s got just the right edgy zing for my sense of humour.

But what I really think is needed is adequate law enforcement. I posted above about Mr. Sekhon. That sort of thing needs to happen in Florida as well as Ontario. Throwing dangerous drivers in jail before they cause crashes, hurt or kill people is the right way to go.

And it sends a clear message to all drivers: Behave aggressively around cyclists and you’re going to jail for a long time.

Culture change is tough stuff. Our legislature doesn’t seem very interested in doing that; just attacking symptoms (cell phone use, texting, aggressive driving, three-foot law, etc.).

Guerrilla marketing is what’s needed. Stuff like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTLqCLYy22A
and
http://www.5thguy.com/

“The problem is, in order to improve conditions so that using transit is practical even for people that own a car costs money…”

Kevin’s comment:
The expansion of I-75 is South-West Florida took great, heaping gobs of multi-million dollar government payouts. Transit would be dirt-cheap in comparison.