Originally Posted by
tandempower
So the question is, if you are LCF or wholeheartedly seeking to give up driving, how did you overcome the issue of not wanting to look different than people who drive around, park, and enter and exit cars. Are you a person who loathes 'fitting in' aesthetically in general? Do you simply not care how you look? Maybe you look good enough that you feel you will look good biking for transportation as well. Do you or have you ever wanted to be hidden from view while on the roads and driven or wished to drive for this reason?
Although it seems strange to me that personal transportation choices that have so much influence over the environment and the future would be ultimately determined by concerns as superficial as looks and privacy, I wonder how big a factor this could be in the long-term cultural struggle to adapt transportation norms to changing realities. Are most people superficial enough to resist transportation reforms 'until the bitter end' simply because they feel like they would look weird riding a bike in street clothes? Likewise, are clothing and bike-design fashion trends sufficient to motivate or deter large numbers of people from transportation biking? Are all the car-commercials depicting people wearing their vehicles sufficient to seduce people into feeling better-looking wearing a car than a bike on the roads?
I think appearance is just one aspect of the issue, with the larger issue being that car use and car ownership in many areas is simply the default. If someone is overly concerned about looking different, then, yes, a different form of transportation is going to be a hard sell. But to my mind, the bigger issue is convincing someone that not having a car is viable way to live. You have to get past that before you even get to deal with appearance issues.
Frankly, if you're super worried about appearing to be odd, then you're not likely to try anything that visibly sets you apart from the general population. Those people join in when it becomes popular, but not before. For my part, I always drove a cheap car, but usually a fairly reliable one. It didn't look great, and sometimes looked pretty strange, but if it did the job, I didn't care. I don't worry about other people thinking my choices are weird. I just worry about whether I think my choices are weird. Now, and when I was growing up, I have been known as the guy who bikes everywhere. If that bothered me, I don't think I'd be able to have given up my car. I don't loath fitting in. I simply don't look at what everyone else is doing to justify my own choices.
I've never even considered privacy. It's never occurred to me that driving would somehow give me more anonymity, so I can't speak to that.
It also wouldn't occur to me to worry that I'd look weird biking in street clothes. If anything, it's the opposite. I worry that cycling clothes are too odd-looking for some settings. If I'm just biking down the road, it doesn't matter what I'm wearing (as long as it doesn't violate any legal, decency standards), but once I get off the bike and move into a social situation, I feel like there are some standards I have to try to maintain. I wouldn't think it appropriate to go to a work meeting in my cycling clothes, for instance. That's one reason I try to find clothes that function well on the bike by being flexible and quick drying, but resemble other, casual clothes. I don't worry that I look odd biking in regular clothes. I do worry that I look odd at a restaurant in a spandex bib, which is why I stay away from cycling-specific clothes for the most part.
Do bike fashions motivate/deter people? I'm sure they do. But for many people, trying to convince them to deviate from the norm is unlikely to work. It's not a cycling issue or a car-free issue. It's just a general, people issue. If someone is terrified of not looking like everyone else, they are simply not going to be the first people you convince to do something that might make them stand out. It's easier to focus on the people who are less worried about appearing different, and, once there's a high enough population of those people out there making it work, other people will feel more comfortable joining in.