Advocacy & Safety - Help needed: Writing a Research Paper on Critical Mass

Hello Everyone,

I'm an urban planning grad student writing a research paper about critical mass. I put together a questionnaire that can be located at http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dDBOVFV2eUduSlYzZHZyM1NJem1ycnc6MA . If you have any experience with critical mass, please fill it out, it would be greatly appreciated. Please pass it along to your friends too, I'm trying to get as broad of a sample as possible.

Also, if you have been active in critical mass rides for a while and would be willing to give me a bit more in depth information about your experiences (especially those of you that have had run-ins with police), please email me at jonbarth@umich.edu

-Jon

My experience with critical mass is that they give cycling a bad name because they insist on breaking traffic rules. If they simply rode in a large mass together and made a point of obeying every traffic law, they would make a very credible appeal that cyclists are also entitled to the road. Unfortunately, they come off as hooligans.

If they simply rode in a large mass together and made a point of obeying every traffic law, they would make a very credible appeal that cyclists are also entitled to the road.

Been there, done that, it doesn't work. The ride gets completely broken up and becomes a celebration of red lights, and not a celebration of bicycling.

Also get input from police and motorists in towns that have CM. I dont expect cyclists to follow traffic regulations any better than motorists who roll thu stop signs, exceed speed limits and pass too close.

All your going to get here is angry old men complaining about CM. Go to a CM and interview the riders. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

Even though at times I've felt sympathy towards their goals(- if not their methods..) - never had the chance to encounter a Critical Mass member or ride. . Until , last September when on vacation near Lisbon, I encountered a parade of Critical mass bikers.. What I saw was disregard for red lights, taunting between motorists and cyclists and a couple fights between taxi cab drivers and cyclists... the 'parade' was like four blocks long of cyclists riding about 4 abreast and taking upon two lanes of a four lane highway.. There was no police presence.. Might they have had a parade pemit making their actions legal. ?. Just a report of what I saw this one incident. Did not see the news report..

What I saw was disregard for red lights, taunting between motorists and cyclists and a couple fights between taxi cab drivers and cyclists... the 'parade' was like four blocks long of cyclists riding about 4 abreast and taking upon two lanes of a four lane highway.. There was no police presence.. Might they have had a parade pemit making their actions legal. ?. Just a report of what I saw this one incident. Did not see the news report..Every CM ride is different -- after all, it's the sum of it's parts, and it's parts are the cyclists that participate and the motorists who encounter it.

Most CM rides don't get parade permits -- after all, getting one suggests that you need a permit to go on a ride with your friends, and that's hardly the point. As for police presence, the police usually have better things to deal with -- but at least in Austin, TX, when they see people running red lights or corking, they do ticket/arrest (corking they arrest for, Blocking a Highway is a Class B misdemeanor, though I don't know if anybody has actually been convicted) the people they see. It's rare, but it happens.

Here, the ride shows plenty of disregard for red lights, but the only taunting that regularly goes on is that honking is answered with bells. Occasionally more happens, but the other riders tend to clamp down on it -- after all, the point really isn't to piss off the drivers, and being ******** brings the cops anyways. (Though with 250 riders, you may have 250 different reasons why people are riding.)

A few years ago, some people here tried to do a `Courteous Mass' where they obeyed all the laws. It fizzled out due to lack of interest. And then there's another large ride going on, the `Thursday Night Social Ride' where they obey some of the laws -- they stop at red lights and stick to the right lane mostly, but will happy ride right through stop signs when there's no other traffic. This ride has grown to be even larger than Critical Mass in the last few months. (Of course, it usually ends at free beer, so that might have something to do with it.)

In any event, capejohn is right on -- if you want to know about CM, go to a CM ride. Talk to the riders. Here's a list -- http://criticalmass.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_rides has a list of rides -- looks like you've got nearby two rides to choose from, Grand Rapids and Detroit. Though it looks like Grand Rapids may have fizzled out, and Detroit is small but still around -- more on that here (http://www.m-bike.org/blog/2009/05/30/critical-mass-detroit-still-rollin).

Hmm, looks like Lansing has one too -- http://www.myspace.com/lansingcriticalmass though it seems really small.

Either way, the next ride should be Christmas. Hopefully your paper isn't due before then.

Go to a CM and interview the riders. You'll be pleasantly surprised.


+1

All your going to get here is angry old men complaining about CM. Go to a CM and interview the riders. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

Better yet, go interview the drivers who are trying to get through town, or the pedestrians trying to cross the street, or the bus drivers and cabbies trying to drive their routes...

Interviewing the riders is only one side of the story -- and, really, the least valuable side of the CM story. CM is supposedly to "raise awareness", so asking CM riders about it is like asking the Pope if he likes Catholicism. Their awareness is already raised.

What matters is how CM is perceived by the general public. Public perception is its purpose, its mission -- and to see whether that mission is successful, you MUST go to the "targets" of that mission and see what they think.

OP, I'll even dare you to do your paper entirely on the other side of CM.

Better yet, go interview the drivers who are trying to get through town, or the pedestrians trying to cross the street, or the bus drivers and cabbies trying to drive their routes...Of course, many of these groups don't like cyclists in general. "Look at that BarrackSi, riding his toy bike right in the middle of the lane on purpose! He's making me late as I try to drive my routes! He's wasting gas by making us all brake (he made me swerve to miss him!), he doesn't pay taxes to use the roads like we do, and he runs red lights with impunity! What a jerk!"

And of course, few people like traffic in general, but fewer still actually perceive themselves as part of the problem.

CM is supposedly to "raise awareness" ... Public perception is its purpose, its missionWell, that's one of many possible purposes. Perhaps that's why you participate, but it may not be why others participate. (Oh, you don't participate? Then how would you know why others do? I guess you simply asked the drivers trying to get through town, the pedestrians, bus drivers and cabbies ...)

OP, I'll even dare you to do your paper entirely on the other side of CM.It's not like that hasn't been done -- occasionally the news will do a report on Critical Mass (usually after a ride) and they'll talk to the chief of police and a driver or two. Perhaps they'll ask a cyclist who's never been on a ride, but of course he doesn't approve either.

(And the other extreme has certainly been done too, though usually not by the local TV news. As usual, the truth generally lies somewhere in-between.)

Ok, what would be another purpose? To get a bunch of people to ride on the street?

Wait -- can't we do that already? Because, if we couldn't, then I wonder what I've been riding on every day this week. It all looked remarkably similar to streets.

OP, here's your summary: CM = mob. You'll hear all sorts of opinions that claim some holy justification for it, but fundamentally, it's the same old crap.