Priest on Call

Not something you see every day, there must have been an emergency at the cathedral and they called the Priest Emergency Zone (yes, indeed, a PEZ dispenser), and there he was. I was most disappointed that the car was a dull Subaru and didn't look more like the Ghostbusters vehicle. Still, you can't have everything. So today I eschewed any pretence at 'good' photography for the sheer comedy factor.

This morning on the way in to work I was reminded of the fact that your transport choice does not determine how nice a person you are. Much as I'd like to believe that all cyclists are moral, upstanding, intelligent members of society, unfortunately there are pillocks everywhere (though in the case of cycling pillocks it gets us all tarred with the same brush).

Okay, so the cars coming from the side street on the left had jumped the lights, only to be confronted with traffic, causing them to stop in the hashed yellow box, blocking all and sundry. Fine, that's wrong. The gap between two of these cars was just enough for a bike at a time and realising that we're approaching in single file. The chap in front of me squeezes through then, for some reason, as the front of the bike gets through the handlebars swing right (I'm giving the benefit of the doubt that he was going through slowly and lost balance). His pannier wallops the bumper of the car, a nice chrome adornment to a Triumph Stag.

I'm not entirely convinced you wouldn't notice this (the pannier got knocked skew-wiff on the rack), and I'm positive it would have been heard inside the car. So what does the guy in front of me do? Just carry on cycling...

Following though I looked at the bumper and (unsurprisingly given a bit of fabric hitting some metal) there was no damage at all, but the lack of any common courtesy irritates me. I've seen myself filtering up the left (entirely legal, though I'd normally prefer to filter on the right where, again, it's legal but also strongy arguably safer - cycle lanes train us to think otherwise) and have a stone kick up from a tyre into a car door. It happens all the time from other cars of course, but mindful of the way cyclists are seen as some sort of social pariah I always stop, inspect for damage and reassure the driver. Some clearly find it slightly unnerving (after all, that kind of interaction just isn't possible between cars) but it settles everything down.

What this guy in the morning did was back up and reinforce every negative thought people have about cyclists. And I know a lot of people who would think that any driver getting angry at that happening is over-reacting. After all, a car is just a car, and then usually the argument about bikes being more vulnerable is trotted out and it would do drivers good to get out of their cages every once in a while. Well, okay, it would do people good to step outside the vehicle, but I think this is missing the point. The fact of the matter is, that car is someone else's property, and it's downright arrogant to think that your choice is better than someone else and use that as an excuse for potential damage. I'd be as livid about someone damaging my car as damaging one of my bikes. The principle is exactly the same.

I ride every day. I write about cycling extensively. But to be honest with you I don't like to be seen as a 'cyclist'. I'm a person. A person who rides a bike. A person who drives a car. A person who walks, who takes the bus, who flies (with the aid of an airplane). And in those rush hour cars I also see people. Maybe people who have been trapped in a routine, or who are misguided, or who occasionally (but really only occasionally when I think about the volume of cars I come across) do something stupid which might endanger me. But they are people, and frankly I never want to lose sight of that if it means turning me into someone who doesn't care about damaging someone else's property.

An eye for an eye and the world will be blind. There. I'm glad I exorcised that thought from this morning. Amen.

EDIT: is it coincidence that as I uploaded this the total views of my pics were at 16666?