"She shouldn’t have been riding her bike there…"

[nikki_d]

Excuse me, I need to vent.

I thought the story of the death of Patricia Cunnigham (the coach in the Annapolis area) had been discussed here before, but I can’t find it anywhere so I am starting a new thread.

Our weekly staff meeting at work is on Thursday mornings and someone asked me when I am leaving for the Climate Ride so we were chit-chatting a bit about that when my boss, who lives in Annapolis says something like “someone we know was just killed recently on their bike near us.” Since he has two daughters in school I realize immediately he must be talking about Patricia Cunningham and express my condolences that his family knew her and how terrible the whole situation was.

“Yeah, well, she shouldn’t have been riding her bike there. If I rode a bike I would never ride there.”

Now, we are talking about someone that doesn’t really shy away from egging me on since I am not exactly the calmest, least defensive person in the world, but really?? Wow.

So, yeah, that went nowhere good fast. I didn’t scream or curse or anything so that was good at least. The conversation was a bit heated though and ended with “well, we are just trying to tell you to be careful.”

Um, yeah, thanks. Let me go look up some statistics about how many people die driving if that is how you tell people to be careful.

Topic

[creadinger]

@nikki_d 64670 wrote:

Excuse me, I need to vent.

“Yeah, well, she shouldn’t have been riding her bike there. If I rode a bike I would never ride there.”

Victim blaming at its finest. Very much along the lines of – “he shouldn’t have walked down that alley if he didn’t want to get mugged”, or “she shouldn’t have worn those clothes to the club if she didn’t want to be raped”.

I feel like we’re FINALLY moving past victim blaming for some circumstances, but it seems cyclists are still at fault in the minds of the public for simply using public roads. Public shaming seems to be one of the most effective techniques to get these people to open their eyes. What’s your bosses e-mail address?

[nikki_d]

@creadinger 64672 wrote:

Public shaming seems to be one of the most effective techniques to get these people to open their eyes. What’s your bosses e-mail address?

While I wasn’t shy about responding in the meeting, I can’t go quite that far… :confused:

[jrenaut]

If the driver didn’t want to run over and kill a cyclist in cold blood, she shouldn’t have been driving there.

[acc]

Or, you can look at in another way.

Because I lack imagination and good sense, I run before sunrise most mornings. I don’t like it. In fact, I positively hate every stinking minute. But I see cyclists and runners out there without lights. (I’m lit up like a parade float.)

They cross intersections. They cross intersections where school buses are rolling through at a fast clip.

I do not want them to get hit. I feel sick every time I see them dart out into traffic.

Because I lack the ability to say no, I found myself on Lee Highway on a bike during rush hour. I did not want to get hit. I prayed to every god/goddess and Tom Cruise I could think of hoping to survive.

I did not want to crash. But I knew that even if I did everything in my power to be safe, in the end I had to rely on drivers not to kill me. No thanks, I need more control than that, or at least better odds.

When people hear about fatal bike crashes I believe they are trying to convince themselves it was avoidable, it couldn’t happen to them. Therefore, they say things like, “I’d never bike there.” Well yes, probably not. But that won’t protect them from the random violence that can happen. It just sounds comforting.

[dasgeh]

@acc 64699 wrote:

When people hear about fatal bike crashes I believe they are trying to convince themselves it was avoidable, it couldn’t happen to them. Therefore, they say things like, “I’d never bike there.” Well yes, probably not. But that won’t protect them from the random violence that can happen. It just sounds comforting.

I think this is the key point. An appropriate response (i.e. one that may actually get the original speaker to stop and think) may be something like:

“I understand that you may not ride your bike there, I might not even choose to ride there, but it is legal to ride there. Certainly you do not mean that she deserved to be killed because she choose to ride her bike there? Maybe we should discuss what could be done so that people legally riding along aren’t killed for their choice.”

[Author]

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