{"id":5881,"date":"2013-02-13T21:08:20","date_gmt":"2013-02-13T20:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/?p=5881"},"modified":"2015-06-09T13:43:49","modified_gmt":"2015-06-09T12:43:49","slug":"mea-culpa-musings-angry-cyclist-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/2013\/02\/13\/mea-culpa-musings-angry-cyclist-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Mea culpa musings (angry cyclist edition)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I screwed up. My latest column for BBC Future is about why cyclists enrage motorists<\/a>. My argument is that cyclists offend the ‘moral order’ of the roads, evoking in motorists a feeling of outrage over perceived rule breaking.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I included some loose words in my article that implied things I don’t believe and wasn’t arguing. Exhibit A:<\/p>\n

Then along comes a cyclist, who seems to believe that the rules aren’t made for them, especially the ones that hop onto the pavement, run red lights, or go the wrong way down one-way streets.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This wrongly suggests both that I think the typical cyclists breaks the law (they don’t), and\/or that motorists are enraged by cyclists’ law breaking. This is not the case, rather I am arguing that motorists are engaged by cyclists’ perceived rule<\/i> breaking, where I mean rule in the sense of ‘convention’. Cyclists habitually, legally, and sensibly break conventions of car-driving such as waiting in queued traffic, moving at the speed limit or not under-taking.<\/p>\n

Exhibit A has now been changed in the article to the more pleasing:<\/p>\n

\nThen along come cyclists, innocently following what they see are the rules of the road, but doing things that drivers aren’t allowed to: overtaking queues of cars, moving at well below the speed limit or undertaking on the inside.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, my bad and apologies for this. I should have been a lot clearer than I was. I’m just grateful that a few people understood what I was getting at (if you read the whole article I hope the correct interpretation is supported by the rest of the phrasing I use). The amount and vehemence of feedback has been quite surprising. Lots of people thought I was a frustrated driver who hated cyclists. In fact, the bike is my main form of transport. I’ve ridden nearly every day for over ten years (and been hit by a car once). For this article I was trying not to sound like the self-righteous cycling proto-fascist I feel like sometimes. I obviously succeeded. Perhaps too well.<\/p>\n

Other people thought I was claiming that this was the only factor affecting road-user’s attitudes. I don’t think this. Obviously selective memory (for bad cyclists or drivers), in- group\/out-group effects and the asymmetry in vulnerability all play a role. I did write a version of the article which laid out the conceptual space a bit clearer, but I decided it was boring to read, and really I wanted to talk about evolutionary game theory and make a novel – and, I thought, interesting – claim.<\/p>\n

I sometimes think I should get “Telling the truth, just not the whole truth” translated into Latin so I can use it as the motto for the column. Each one I write someone comes back to me with something I missed out. If I tried to be comprehensive I’d end up with a textbook, instead of a 800 word magazine column. I don’t want to write textbooks, so I’m reasonably happy with leaving things out, but I do worry that there is a line you cross when telling some of the truth amounts to a deception or distortion of the whole truth. I’m trying, each time, not to cross that line. Feedback on how to manage this is welcome.<\/p>\n

There were many other comments of all shades. You can ‘enjoy’ some of them on the BBC Future facebook page here<\/a>. If you did leave a comment on email\/facebook\/twitter I’m sorry I couldn’t respond to all of them. I hope this post clarifies things a bit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I screwed up. My latest column for BBC Future is about why cyclists enrage motorists. My argument is that cyclists offend the ‘moral order’ of the roads, evoking in motorists a feeling of outrage over perceived rule breaking. Unfortunately, I included some loose words in my article that implied things I don’t believe and wasn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-me","category-psychology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5KQtW-1wR","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5881"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5881"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6077,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5881\/revisions\/6077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idiolect.org.uk\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}