I believe your first paragraph does sum up the content and tone of contempt of the car-free forum. Which is A-OK with me as long as what is posted here, stays here, and is NEVER confused or mistaken for bicycling advocacy by those who are not members of the self righteous back patting gang.

Then close your own thread. Honestly, don't tell me you expected complete civility, as your thread topic put car-free folks in the category of hating people who drive cars. it's "car culture" remember?

nice to read your text again

Is that because he's a moderator, or can we ordinary mortals close threads we started?

okay... THREAD CLOSED.

-Forum Member.











































crap! well, I tried :B

I'd like to propose a theory to explain what Expatriate refers to as contempt for the automobile and hence those who drive them. I would first conjecture that there is a wider range of response to the automobiles (and their drivers) on the part of most cyclists who live, or try to live, as car-free as possible. That range runs from respect, empathy, sympathy, pity, through shallow disinterest to outright hatred. And for those of us who have lost friends in collisions when the damned things are driven by drunks or other mentally compromised individuals these feelings can be deep seated to say the least.

My theory is drawn primarily from observations made by Marshall Mcluhan, a social visionary and popular culture theorist known for his work in the 1960's and 70's. He made this observation about the automobile:

He observed that our technology had become extensions of the human self. Just as we are collectively interacting right now on the internet we collectively interact with all technology. Thus a common experience of many bike riders is the feeling of becoming "one with the machine". The bicycle is then an extension of the physical self. The cranks an extension of the legs, pounding in a rhythm with the heart and the lungs, the wheels as a further extension of the legs and the feet. Anyone who has experienced this, whether on a rapid mountain descent or flying through traffic on 6th Avenue, knows viscerally what I am talking about.

The automobile is likewise an extension of the physical self but in a vastly different way. The panoramic visual landscape is compromised. The windows function to deflect air, the roof shields out light, precipitation, the body of the car filters the vast percentage of sounds and smells. The automobile is thus, as Mcluhan so eloquently describes, "an aggressive shell". The experience of driving the automobile (the extended self) tends to be one of distancing the driver (the inner self) from one's environment. The technology not only is a highly effective protective barrier it is also extraordinarily more powerful than the human being without it- hence, it's threatening or at least imposing presence as contrasted with a bicycle.

Since both the bicycle and the automobile are extensions of primarily the human being's locomotor system they both impact what is referred to in biology as "the degree of cephalization"- basically brain size in relationship to body mass. The impact of the bicycle is far more manageable because it's power is relative to the strength of the rider and it's weight and mass is offset by the increase in the human's energy efficiency- so it has little overall change in degree of cephalization. The automobile, however, has proportionately higher mass than the human being thus vastly reducing the degree of cephalization. This is why a child, with a not fully formed brain function and still developing motor skills, can ride a bicycle but would be lethal behind the wheel of a car.

So, basically, no matter how smart we are, or how smart we think we are, we are all "stupider" behind the wheel of a car. We are also, due to it's design, size, mass and power inherently more aggressive and dangerous to those around us. We have more akin to a rhinocerous than a human as soon as we step into a car and shut the door.

What you're sensing as contempt is legitimate fear accompanied by mock displays (pounding on car hoods, kicking doors, flipping the bird etc,) of aggression on the part of cyclists. These displays are necessary to keep these very dangerous beasts away.

We're all mortals, some of us just have more options on our screen. If you want to close a thread that you started, just hit the SPAM! button, and send a request to the moderators' queue to close the thread. This one looks like it may have some life left, so I'm leaving it open for a bit longer.

Nice try - SpokesInMyPoop. Did you forget to click your heels together 3 times?

Not at all Ex. However, if you are wearing anything which exploits a cotton plant, silkworm or the polyester moth, I'll probably rethink our business relationship.

I'm sure I've got a self-incriminating hemp joke somewhere up my sleeve...

Is that it?! Why didn't you tell me?!?

Can't give away all our secrets.

I love you.

That said, a lot of my contempt for cars at this moment has to do with the fact that I could've died last week, and the accident that totalled my bike in sept. In both cases, I had the right of way and wasn't doing anything wrong. I'm gradually getting over the shock of that, but having a car run a red light at about 45mph and missing you by inches (and feeling the draft of the car) would scare ANYBODY... unless if you were suicidal. Then just ride off a bridge.

Drivers can get too jaded. That I understand, because I used to own a car (on even less money than I make now! and higher cost of living! not to mention, the most exp. gas in the nation at the time! Go figure!), and many times I felt like a zombie piloting a huge mass of metal... zoning out.

wait, what? Oh, pass me my americano, plz.

i agree. especially if you grow up in the car culture as most of us here have, you hardly even notice the "side effects" of driving...

i have observed that most normal, pleasant, "nice" people who get in a car and drive in traffic become impatient, angry, and aggressive --- the car isoltaes one from the environment and gives the impression that any thing other than a clear free road to go as fast as possible is a hindrance - a bad thing! and this build agrression and anger... the extreme results are road-rage. -- sure in a shopping mall you might be annoyed if you are in a hurry to get somewhere to buy something and a group is walking REALLY slowly 3-abreast and blocking your path, but the likelihood that you would "walk over them" or push them out of the way or pose a real threat or danger to them is highly unlikely - such aggressive anti-social behavior is not accepted AT THE HUMAN SCALE. but in a car you can tailgate or "lay on the horn" or "play chicken" or cut someone off or force someone out of a lane or off the road and it is mostly considered "ok" in our society. (and dangerous!!) -- think about the equivalent to honking or tailgating or cutting someone off pedestrain to pedestrian: the perpetrator is considered a real a*hole, but more importantly, no real danger is created.

this also affects the design of cities. often you hear "i would bike, but..." with the reason being that its "too dangerous" because of cars or "too inconvenient" b/c of auto-centric design (i.e. multi-lane road or interstate).

the auto-centric attitude permeates virtually our entire society. in Europe it is at least a little more evident as the many pre-auto city/villiage layouts still exist -- a pedestrian zone in europe is a wonderful thing: it is set up on the scale of PEOPLE with all kinds of "quality of life" benefits: quieter, safer, prettier, etc. -- you can walk directly form A to B without following a auto-layout grid with stoplights and yeild signs as PEOPLE can negotiate this at their own level.

As has been written in many books (e.g. Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere) Americans love Disney World or amusement parks primarily because they offer this HUMAN SCALE that average American life does not offer. but people pay big bucks to go to some fake landscape but rarely make the connection that they COULD have this is every day life. or IF they consider it, oh my God, they'd have to make a few changes and sometimes not be able to take the car everywhere with free parking right in front of the door, etc. --- the auto-centric mindset is so ingrained that it is difficult to think outside the box.

auto-centric and cars have all these negative effects:
* pollution
* danger to others in society (auto "accidents" are basically accepted as ok in our society.
* design at the scale of the auto instead of HUMAN SCALE (i.e. wide streets, high speeds, spread out low-density development so walking is difficult, large land areas used for parking, etc)
* anti-social behavior through isolation in a car (agrression towards others that "slow one down")

as i have said elsewhere i am not anti-car, and i also own one (car-lite), but i do not think cars should rule and dominate our world - people should! a person should not be "allowed" to get in a car and act anti-socially by "attacking" and endangering others just "because it's my dang right to drive wherever i want" -- and then this extends to other areas like government spending (tax dollars) and tax breaks and foreign policy (oil) and whatnot...

we as a society should THINK about when and how it is beneficial and appropriate to use cars and do so only when appropriate. but when it is not (e.g. in urban areas where cars just don't work b/c of traffic and space required for parking and danger to pedestrains/cyclists), then we should limit auto "rights" to protect the rights of PEOPLE -- rather than allowing the auto to dictate all policy and decisions (under the philosophy that cars are a $$$ source so must be supported/subsidized at all "costs"! i.e. social/society/quality-of-life costs)

Well said, Spokes.

So, any car-owners wanna have a go at explaining the contempt that car-owning people have for car-free people?

Bikes on the road mean I get to the buffet a full 5 seconds late. At that point, the terrorists have already won.

Oh, and while I'm whining about contempt, (on a whiny thread) anybody wanna explain why at least one poster was saying (contemptuously, it seemed to me) about how people who are car-free by choice have nothing in common with people who are car-free because they're poor? The way our economic system works (it seems to me that) some people in this world have gotta be too poor to have cars, and there's no sense disrespecting them for that.