Bullying. How do we stop it?

When I was studying for my PA driver license 27 years ago, I learned to count two seconds between my car and the one in front of me to determine if I had enough time to react if it suddenly slowed or stopped. I still drive that way. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only person on the highway that learned that.

Unconscious tailgating seems to have become an annoying norm. But what I’m more concerned about at the moment is deliberate tailgating and intimidation.

I’m certain a tractor trailer driver needs more than two seconds to react and slow that much mass at highway speeds. Yet, a distressing number of these drivers will speed up to within a car length of another vehicle at 75mph. I witnessed too much of this while driving on I-95 in the northeast in May and again on our way to and from North Carolina last week. In most cases, it is clearly deliberate bullying—the truck driver is using the center lane (because he’s not allowed in the far left lane) and driving up fast to the back of every little car in that lane. Once the intimidated car driver is able to move to the right lane, the truck driver passes and tailgates the next car.

I was on the receiving end of this several times on this trip, but the incident in the above photo really pissed me off. I was driving the speed limit (70) and using the center lane to pass several slower trucks when this trucker rushed up onto my bumper and tried to bully me into going faster. I am extremely averse to rewarding bullies with capitulation, not to mention that I don’t want to waste gas accelerating at that speed (70mph is already a fuel-inefficient speed). I gave Lisa my iPhone and asked her to take photos of how close the truck was to the back of my car. When he passed, she took photos of the side of his truck. When he moved back into the lane, I moved up behind him for a moment so we could get a photo and a license plate number.

She then called information and called the trucking company and spoke to the driver’s supervisor. The supervisor knew who the driver was by the truck number. He took our complaint seriously, saying that was one of their better drivers and he was at the end of a long haul. He said he would talk to the driver.

Lisa also called the South Carolina Highway Patrol (non-emergency number), but they told us the only way to report an incident is to make an emergency call and have a trooper sent. By this time the truck driver’s behavior had changed dramatically. Perhaps alerted by my clear movement toward his license plate, or by the other truckers who may have seen us taking photos, the driver slowed to between 65 and 69mph and stayed in the right lane. He modified his behavior even before we reached his supervisor, but I’m sure he got a message from base after our call, as well. By that point, it didn’t seem a good use of emergency resources to call out a trooper.

But I did continue to follow him (at a safe distance), hanging back and matching his speed. Several times he slowed even though there was no traffic in front of him. It seemed like he wanted me to pass. Maybe he wondered if I was following him waiting for the highway patrol to catch up. I hope so. I was content to quietly unnerve him all the way to North Carolina, but he pulled into a rest stop after about 20 miles.

We need a system and a guaranteed response

Our culture of speed has created a sense of entitlement to be furious and righteously nasty to someone who is driving slower than you want to go—even if that person is driving the speed limit, or a little above it. It’s maddening enough when private vehicle drivers are aggressive and dangerous, but we should have a zero tolerance policy for aggressive behavior by commercial drivers. There is no excuse for someone who has supposedly been educated to higher standards to deliberately threaten the lives of other citizens. The good news is, these drivers should be easy enough to identify by markings on their vehicles. We just need a well-known, simple system that makes it easy for citizens to report them.

I did a search and found several voluntary systems for risk-management. These are the source of the various “How’s My Driving” bumper stickers seen on some fleet vehicles. The truck in the above incident didn’t have one of those stickers.

Justice is even more difficult for cyclists

Last April, Rodney and I were bullied by a tractor trailer driver on Conway. It marred an otherwise-perfect ride from Michigan to Tradeport, where scores of other drivers shared the road safely and courteously. Since I was riding to work with Rodney for the purpose of recording his commute on video, I have the incident documented:

If you want to know how many statutes this driver violated, George listed them here.

In this case, we didn’t get a license plate or have any way to identify the truck as he sped past. I didn’t get any identifying information until I looked at the video on my computer. My experience with law enforcement in such matters made me believe it would be fruitless to make Rodney late for work by calling them out at the time. So, when I got the truck number from the video, Rodney called the trucking company. That’s gotten us nowhere. They claim they can’t figure out who the driver was based on the number we gave them. The video quality is too poor to get the license plate number.

That driver deliberately endangered two cyclists, one of whom is the father of two small children. Because we have no good reporting system for this kind of behavior, he got away with it.

The system has left all road users, but most of all cyclists and pedestrians, feeling powerless against bullies. We can’t chase them down, but even when we do get a plate number, we’re usually told, “if an officer didn’t see it, there’s nothing we can do…” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people tell me about incidents which should have involved police intervention but didn’t because cyclists didn’t even bother to call them. That’s understandable. Most of us do feel abandoned by the system. Meanwhile motorists call 911 to report cyclists riding legally in the lane and the police respond to that.

Livability is a product of attitudes, beliefs and behaviors

Even though they are a minority, the impact of bullies on our quality of life and use of our transportation infrastructure is significant. For some people, it outweighs the benefits of using a bike. The way motorists treat each other has an impact on the average person’s desire to even try using a bike! Or they will choose to take on more risk and frustration to avoid the possibility of encountering aggression — riding on the sidewalk, in the door zone, etc.

Physical aggression toward cyclists is rare (probably even more rare than physical aggression toward other car drivers). Most harassment of cyclists is just territorial noise. Most of us who use bikes for transportation have learned to ignore it. But no one should have to have thick skin to use public roads. Roads are for people and good, civil people need to take them back. We need to make it clear that speed-entitlement and its destructive behaviors are not acceptable. We want livable communities. We want freedom to choose a mode of transportation without fear of being treated badly. Is that too much to ask?

If our political leaders, law enforcement and DOTs really want to create a safer and more equitable traffic environment (especially to promote alternative transportation), they are going to have to make enforcement and traffic justice a priority. We need a public stand against incivility, but we don’t need more lip service. We need reporting systems, action and real consequences.

Establishing new norms

People act like hotheads because they rely on their anonymity to get away with it. We need to make it so they can’t. More importantly, we need to make it so they feel such actions are frowned upon by their community. Ultimately, we have to change the beliefs to change the behaviors. If commercial drivers, who are not so anonymous, feel entitled to blatantly bully other drivers, we definitely have a belief problem. The system is corrupt to the core. One of the beliefs is that anger and impatience are normative. This makes acting on them “understandable” vs abhorrent.

I have heard police officials unwittingly act as apologists for road rage and abusive behavior by suggesting cyclists shouldn’t be encouraged to ride assertively because it might cause road rage. Really? Think about that. The state trooper who pulled over our law-abiding group on Rosalind last May actually suggested we should single up and ride on the edge of the lane so someone didn’t assault us (this was after we used his statute book to point out that we were riding legally). Is this how we deal with assault in this country? By asking the potential victims to give up their freedom to travel legally and safely?

Kathryn at the South Florida Bike Coalition is taking the lead in starting a conversation on this issue in Florida. Just my experience with driving a car in South Florida suggests the problem is bigger there than here. Today, she posted an intriguing idea on the SFBC facebook page.

South Florida Bike Coalition is sick of the road rage and sick of the police and the policymakers who do not defend the victims. We’re not going to accept this anymore. Seeking partners new and old from Homestead to Jupiter to join a walk/bike/motorcade for safer streets in South Florida. Date TBD.

Expect a post about this on the SFBC website. I’ll add a link when it’s up. [UPDATE: Here it is, go read it!]

What if we made it a statewide event… standing up for civility and asking our community leaders to stand up for us? Not just cyclists, but citizens. Regardless of mode, we all use the public space. We’re all affected by incivility.