This was a hate crime

Former Bicycling Magazine editor Andrew Bernstein was struck by a hit-and-run driver on Saturday, July 27, as he rode home from a velodrome near Boulder, Colorado. The ER doctor described it as "a high-energy impact," based on Bernstein's injuries.

The only evidence from the crash is a piece of turn signal lens. Investigators have said that they think it might be from a 2000 Dodge Ram van -- a touch of dark irony -- but it's not certain, and anyone could pick up a front end ding. These cases go unsolved more often than not. A teenage girl jogging along a road in Washington, Maine, was left for dead by a hit-and-run driver last week. Remorse is in short supply out there.

I say that Andrew Bernstein's injuries were the result of a hate crime because cyclists are all too familiar with the kinds of things that motorists post in comment threads after a crash involving a motor vehicle and a cyclist. We're all too familiar with the intimidating behavior that some drivers exhibit in the presence of witnesses, let alone when a hostile driver encounters a rider on a lonely road.

Drivers who mow down cyclists are cowards. Drivers who mow down cyclists from behind are the same kind of cowards who would shoot someone in the back and then brag about beating them to the draw. Violence against cyclists stems from the same assumption of superiority that inspires racist, religious, and sexist violence. Violent people are the minority, but you only have to meet one psychopath at the wrong time to wind up dead.

In the 1960s, civil rights activists went down to the part of the country where racist murders were not only not prosecuted, they were encouraged. I draw the parallel not to put cyclists on an equal footing with the people who risked lynching in order to advance racial equality, but to point out that the white supremacists act from the same sense of entitlement and cowardly overkill that motorists exhibit when passing inches away from your handlebar, or blatantly hitting someone just for riding a bike. And road cyclists need to find the same courage and resolve to keep going out there without knowing when or if an attack will come. Most of the time, it doesn't. That does not mean that it won't.

On Wednesday, some worthless piece of human refuse thought it would be funny to squeeze me against the guardrail on Route 28. He was in a string of traffic, so he could't take time to nail me right into it, but his intention was obvious. He suddenly appeared, nearly touching my elbow, and then pulled slowly and deliberately back into the lane after he had passed. It looked like a white Chevy Blazer with a Fox Racing sticker in the upper right corner of the back window. It was just the fox head outline, no words. On another day, a tractor trailer slid his big tires right past me on Center Street. That seemed more indifferent than aggressive. If I died, I died. He would not face charges, or even much disapproval. It was a safe bet for him.

Nothing good is freely given. No one in their right mind would have climbed out of a landing craft onto the beaches of Normandy, or any of the Pacific islands wrested back from the Japanese. The battlefields of the American Revolution were great places to get hurt. It completely sucks that merely riding a bike turns into an act of defiance and an invitation to assault and murder, but that's the kind of species we are.

The thing about homicidal cowards is that they don't care how contemptible they are. They derive their self worth from their machinery, whether it's a car, a truck, or an assault rifle. They feel pride in their willingness to hurt people that they deem inferior. The fact that their targets can't retaliate only provides further proof to them of their superiority. And yet most of them would be rather unhappy if every trip on the roads and streets turned into a tank battle between them and their armored adversaries. Think of it: "Honey, I'm going out for milk, eggs, and toilet paper! My will is in the top dresser drawer! Kids? Who wants to be my turret gunner today? Remember, only the strong survive!"
They're not looking for a good fight. They're just bullies. It's easy to act tough when you expect your adversary to back down.

Most riders prefer quiet roads. Light traffic or almost no traffic seems less threatening. It's easier to relax a little. But long gaps with no other witnesses present drivers with the best opportunity for a quick act of malice or an easy escape from a moment of carelessness. "Oops! I think I hit that biker! Oh well. I promise to feel sorry about it and try not to do it again. They knew the risks."

Cycling has become a form of passive resistance. It can't be active resistance, because the context is not a declared war. Motorists are armed with deadly battering rams and can kill or maim us with a twitch of the steering wheel. We have nothing.

Many riders have abandoned the field. They're like people who might support the troops but would never enlist. They're the ones who call it wisdom when they chuckle patronizingly and say that they have the sense to take up mountain biking or ride only on separated paths. They are motorists with a cycling hobby.

White supremacists argue that white people ended up on top because they won evolution. In the kill or be killed worldview, the people with the best weapons and the willingness to use them conquered the planet, except for the extensive parts that they didn't. Motor supremacists argue that motor vehicles won the right to dominate the road by technological superiority. Might makes right. In both cases, the technology and philosophy provide temporary dominance at the cost of ultimate destruction.

Is it worth fighting a losing battle? More people reach driving age every day. If the economy doesn't completely collapse, these people will get some form of motor vehicle to carry them between the multiple jobs they will need to earn enough money to pay for necessities like food, shelter, clothing, and that crap-box car. They'll call it normal, and resent anyone they see on a bike, who is obviously a less useful citizen. If you have time to waste on a bike, you have time to work more. Put some normal clothes on and get a car like a normal person. Abnormal is inferior. Inferior is weak. Weakness should be destroyed. See the logic?

Legal rights versus legal standing

As a slick, heavy, late winter snowfall accumulated on the roadway, I watched three riders on fat bikes slithering unsteadily down Mill Street with a motorist trapped behind them. I contemplated once again the difference between official rights and the treatment someone gets for exerting those rights.

Rights only seem to be won at a blood price. Women were beaten by men, and some died, as they protested over many years to get the right to vote. Black people have endured centuries of oppression and discrimination, massacre and murder. They can tell you how their rights are respected in actuality even now, as opposed to what is written. That’s not even addressing the way some things need to be rewritten even further to secure liberty and justice for all. Native rights everywhere get crushed beneath the advancing front of militarized industrialism. Labor confronted management for a fairer division of the proceeds of that industrial system, but their gains are being erased even as the system continues to gouge the illusion of profit out of the dying planet.

Because the roads are a shared space, every user has to consider the genuine rights and needs of the other users. A cyclist almost always appears to be on a trivial errand. A motorist will ask, "does this person need to be riding here, making me wait and maneuver around them?" By law, the roads are the common herd paths we have all agreed to use to get from place to place by whatever means we have. Horses are still allowed on most of them. You're within your rights -- but out of your mind -- to walk along most of them. Both equestrians and pedestrians will always get more sympathy than a bicyclist, because we have a sentimental attachment to horses in our history, and pedestrians seem like fellow drivers who are just down on their luck. A bicyclist has made a conscious choice to get this wheeled thing with which to wobble half in and half out of the legitimate territory of big metal boxes that go effortlessly quickly at the push of one pedal.

Many of us have had the experience of reporting a motorist to the police when we had only a full description of the vehicle including license number. If you can't identify the driver, you have no case. And, as a bicyclist, your problem seldom merits any expenditure of resources by police to help you nail down that identification. The registered owner simply uses the standard excuse that someone else was using the vehicle that day and the whole thing goes away. Even in cases where a cyclist was killed and the driver was known, penalties are disproportionately light, because bicycling is viewed as a voluntary act known to increase the rider's vulnerability to what would be a minor collision between the armored vehicles customarily used for personal transportation in the modern world.

When a police officer pulls you over in your car, what do they ask for first? Your license and registration. That is the moment at which they nail down who is driving what at the time of infraction. They've got facial ID and the perp in the driver's seat. That is the standard, and it's a good one when you consider how unpleasant it would be to live in a country where you could be thrown in the slammer on nothing more than an accusation. While that is unfortunately common in racially biased enforcement, and hardly unknown even among the privileged, it is not the official standard. It gets complicated when persons of interest are brought in for questioning and actual suspects are detained, but that's beyond the street level experience of a rider simply trying to proceed unmolested in the perfectly legal act of using the public roadway.

I thought that the fat bikers were being foolish and selfish, but I did not get to see whether they were just taking a few yards to pull off safely in the slithery conditions. It wasn't as bad as the morning many years ago when I saw one of the athletic firebrands in Jackson, NH, riding his cyclocross bike down Route 16 in about six inches of new snow, with a gigantic state plow truck stuck behind him. Rights are one thing. Smarts are another. Because we may be asked to pay a blood price for our rights at any time, pick your battles. I hardly expected the plow truck to crush the macho man on the 'cross bike, but I'm pretty sure the penalties would have been slim to nonexistent if he had. Similarly, had one of the fat bikers fallen in front of the car behind them, I doubt if the driver would have been cited for following too closely when he was unable to stop before sliding over the fallen rider. Just bad luck. Sorry about that. You shouldn't have been out there on a bike when you didn't need to be. And who in this great land of ours ever really needs to be on a bike? You hardly even see the DWI crowd riding bikes anymore. At least I don't see too many of them around here.

In the mostly urban areas where a lot of people live without cars, and a lot of them use bikes for transportation, the culture of acceptance builds alongside a corresponding seething cauldron of hatred from committed motorists subjected to large numbers of bicycles in the traffic mix. The cyclists can make a better case that what they are doing is necessary, but they are still branded as slackers and wastrels who should get better jobs and buy a car like a normal person. Rather than respect the contributions of workers on the lower end of the pay scale, performing necessary functions that most of us would prefer to avoid, our wealth-obsessed society scorns them and treats them as disposable interchangeable parts. Lose one dirtbag, grab another one from the sidelines to fill the spot. A lot of bike commuters are involuntary, on really crappy bikes, with no awareness of cycling culture and tradition. They're not out for the health benefits and to save disposable income. They're stuck with it, and are trying to make the most of income that falls far short of any surplus. However, they are reaping some exercise benefits in spite of themselves, and the economic benefits are no less real. With a focus on promoting the lifestyle and improving everyone's experience of it, every bike commuter and transportation cyclist would benefit.

Hope as I might, that is highly unlikely to happen. In spite of the fact that my haphazard pursuit of creative dreams has left me working for less than the proposed minimum wage of $15 an hour, and facing a destitute old age, the fact that I am a white male from a middle class background automatically condemns my ideas as elitist, tone deaf, and contemptibly out of touch with reality. I have been excoriated before. Until I shut up and go away, I will be again. It's sort of like riding your bike. You know that someone is going to yell, honk, swerve, or throw something. Your only defense is surrender. And that's not really a defense.

Cycling is a Civil Right

A couple of guys in the shop today were telling us Virginia Beach is a horrible place to ride.

"They really don't get it down there," said one. "They really don't want you out there on the road. When I go to visit my sister there, I just don't go out riding."

When I hear a thing like that I immediately want to go there and ride. I want to see if it is as bad as they say or if something about their riding style attracts problems. And if it is as bad as all that, I want to get on the road and assert cyclists' rights.

In driver education, many decades ago, I was told repeatedly that driving is a privilege, not a right. Unsafe and unsociable behavior would lead to loss of driving privileges. This many years later, with the automobile widely assumed to be an indispensable appliance, I wonder if the government could therefore take away someone's right to this ubiquitous transportation device. They do, and not often enough, but that's a constitutional question for another day.

No one has ever said that cycling was a privilege. Walking certainly is not a privilege. And, in our car-centric "civilization," neither one is exactly a treat in many places. Our automotive overlords shower their scorn on us like chickenshit tyrants from within the cabs of their armored limousines. We are asserting a right of free passage on the public right of way. They are rubbing their privileged asses all over us.

In my neighborhood, the drivers are remarkably accommodating, with the usual glaring exceptions. Some spineless, micro-manhood loser will decide to use the power of his vehicle to make up for the inadequacy of his physical and intellectual capacity by ripping by with inches to spare, maybe downshifting noisily or laying on the horn. Or it might be a woman, though that happens less often. And, when summer traffic packs the roads with people "from away," some of them may be inattentive or impatient in the custom of their urban and suburban homelands. But this is generally a pretty nice area for cycling.

My fortunate circumstances don't keep me from identifying with the downtrodden, such as I was in Maryland. The Annapolis area has gotten better in some ways and worse in others. I didn't move to New Hampshire for better cycling. The better cycling was a bit of a surprise.

Today when I listened to our visitors and remembered things I've read about many dangerous riding venues, mostly in the south, I wondered if we could institute our own version of the Freedom Riders. Send activists into areas that need their consciousness raised about cycling. Don't go all Critical Mass on them, but put a large number of cyclists into their traffic mix right away, to jump start the interactions of motorist and cyclist on a more even footing.

Obviously our civil rights position is not as dire as that of African Americans in the 1950s and '60s. But the motorist bigots do injure and kill cyclists and engage in hate speech against us. We are viewed monolithically as bike riders, lumped into one pool of disparaged sub-humanity because of our bikes. Cycling freedom riders could expect to meet violence. The confrontations would bring the dialogue about cyclists' rights to the forefront of the media.

It would be vitally important for the front-line riders of this campaign to behave with the utmost scruples. It can't be just a handful of local kooks who can be taken out separately. It has to be a campaign of organized activity. It has to be in significant numbers.

This is not civil disobedience. Apparently, in some parts of the so-called Land of the Free, the playground bullies have successfully scared the pencil-necked cyclist geeks into giving up their lunch money and cowering in the audio-visual room during recess. What cyclists want to do is legal. What the bullies are doing is not. We just want to use our bikes. Our right slows down their privilege from time to time. That makes us fair game in their eyes.

That ain't right.