khuon

I guess one could call it that. I think it's somewhat human nature to judge an entire minority group of individuals based on the actions of a few when the few display a behaviour that stands out. Let's face it, we as cyclists are a minority despite the fact that we are already representative of a greater part of society. In the greater scheme of society, we're no different than anyone else but in the much more constrained world of traffic we're definately classified as a minority road user. As such, humans being what they are try and judge others based on what information they have. Since most road users have little information about cycling and cyclists, they can only form expectations based upon what they can see and identify with. This restricted amount of information to the general public is what does cyclists harm. In general, a cyclist behaving responsibly will not get much notice from the other road users. They will have little to no impact on other traffic. This is a good thing. However, a cyclist misbehaving will make a mental mark and a noticable impact.

Now this is where the minority factour comes into play. A motorist misbehaving will also make a mark upon another motorist but that other motorist can identify and is familiar with motorists and thus can counterbalance such impacts with the knowledge that not all motorists are like that. Afterall, he/she is also a motorist and he/she knows of other motorists that do not act in an offending manner.

Likewise, as cyclists we do the same thing when we regard other cyclists. However a motorist who is unfamiliar with cycling will prejudge any cyclist he/she sees and at best may be uncertain as to how to handle themselves around cyclists or at worst display animosity towards that cyclist based on a previous encounter with a bad cyclist. And along the same vein, I've encountered cyclists who don't understand motorists.

One could definately call this prejudice or bigotry... I guess. I don't know. I'm not trained to define and apply that terminology to societal behaviours but that's simply how I see things.

Those of us who are both cyclists and motorists understand that there is really no "us" and "them" because we do not regard ourselves in any kind of minority or majority and we understand that the actions of the few bad apples should not condemn the entire orchard.

So what's the solution? This is a social engineering problem. The solution I believe is to get the general public more involved (or at least interested/educated) with cycling. The more the general road user can identify with cyclists, the less interoperability problems will arise. Afterall, private car drivers have less problems (although some still exists) coexisting with commercial vehicle operators simply because they can identify better with them, are more accustomed to them and better understand how they behave. It's all going to boil down to education.

P.S. If none of this is making any sense, it's probably because I've written it at 0200 localtime.