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Road.cc and the Power of Words
Tribalism is a serious problem in our society, and the media often make it worse.
In the world of cycling, and on road.cc particularly, we hear about "cyclists" and "drivers" on a daily basis.
The use of these words not only assumes the existence of such categories of people, but it also plays a significant role in constructing them.
This, in turn, reinforces the "drivers vs cyclists" narrative, one of the many variants of tribalism corrupting our thinking.
Words are powerful.
With the exception, perhaps, of those for whom cycling is a profession, the word "cyclist" does not apply to anybody else. The sole act of driving a car does not make one a "driver". When I make dinner I'm not a "cook", when I write an email I'm not a "writer", when I paint a wall in my house I'm not a "decorator" and so on. To put it another way, riding a bike does not define who I am. Nor does driving a car. These are actions, not categories of people.
The urge to categorise people according to what they happen to be doing at any given moment is not healthy.
A recent road.cc article reporting on a crime where somebody shot somebody else in the US was presented as if it was somehow about cycling since the killer was described as a "cyclist", as he happened to be riding a bicycle when the incident took place.
The original article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described the killer as a "bicyclist", and the Associated Press, from which news outlets picked up the story, ran the headline "Cyclist gets 25 years in deadly road rage shooting".
All of this gives more ammunition to the relentless anti-cycling campaign that much of the media are engaged in.
But I think road.cc should have the moral obligation to counter the normalisation of the "cyclists vs [insert other category of people]" narrative.
I wonder, for example, if alongside the "Near Miss of the Day" feature, there could be one like the "Bad Headline of the Day", pointing out instances where the word "cyclists" is obviously misused and serves to misrepresent a story as being about an imaginary category of (bad!) people rather than what it is really about.
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
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46 comments
Mercedes driver crashes into Voi e-scooters in Southampton
I've put this article into the CCIB thread, but from this thread's point of view, it's a decent example, for a change, of there being a driver - e.g. quoting police Twitter: "The driver of this Mercedes realised his severe lack of talent all too late..."
Also this court report: Driver who sped off from police and crashed in field spared jail
https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/20058524.driver-sped-off-police-c...
When a road is blocked, it's drivers you often see saying "ppl can't get past".
This, in turn, reinforces the "drivers vs cyclists" narrative
It's not a 'narrative', it's the truth. Cyclists, and I even include ebikers in this because they are subject to the same driving behaviours, experience this every day or multiple times every day. Forget all this homely 'why can't we all just get along' bollocks, we are under attack from aggressive, thoughtless, cyclist-despising b******s like the driver of Nissan Juke SL60 KCC who never even considered not overtaking me, but instead cut in right in front to give considerably more clearance to oncoming Jaguar than the 20-30 cms allowed to me- that's less than 1/5th of the recommended distance
If he's prepared to lump ebike users with us who lack electrical assistance then I believe he's getting serious.
And he's right too. I'd also include e-scooterists as they're definitely sharing in the general abuse that some drivers give to other road users.
It's both. The narrative shapes the truth, and the truth reinforces the narrative. It's a vicious circle. So you have two options: give up and accept that it'll always be like that, or try to do something differently.
Except no-one here is saying that. What they're saying is that if we want things to change we have to think (and cause others to think) differently about the situation. Otherwise we're just perpetuating the same old anti-patterns.
Far from 'just getting along', the suggestion is to challenge people's thinking by using language that subverts the comfortable norm.
Thank you very much to everybody who commented on my post, and to Simon in particular for offering such an engaging reply.
I agree that "moral obligation" was probably exaggerated. I guess that came from the fact that road.cc is more than just tech news or race news, and things like the "near miss of the day" are part of a certain ethos about general road-user behaviour.
The point about the validity of the word "cyclist" is, in my opinion, less trivial than it may look. Let me adjust my glasses as I write this. Besides the legal or even the dictionary definition of "cyclist", the fundamental issue is that words -- "cyclist" or any other -- don't actually have meaning. We mean, i.e. convey ideas, and we do that largely through language.
The word "cyclist" is a vehicle for meanings that we create, share, negotiate etc. So when we say something like "Cyclist gets 25 years in jail", we're not only using the word "cyclist" in a legally correct way, but we are also contributing to constructing the idea that a particular category of people -- "cyclists" -- exists and is determined by the use of a bicycle. That may be legally correct, but the effect of that categorisation in day-to-day discourse is unhealthy.
I agree with OnYerBike: maybe "cyclist" should not be restrcited to professionals. I also agree with Rendel that a site dedicated to cycling is bound to talk about cyclists a lot. But what I'm trying to say -- badly -- is that we should move away from simply labelling anyone on a bike as a "cyclist" as if that very fact -- being on a bike -- somehow was meaningful enough to justify their inclusion in the same category of people as the vast majority of road.cc readers, for example.
I guess I'm tired of seeing headlines declaring cyclists this and cyclists that when what they're really talking about is a huge array of different people who simply happen to use a bike in the context in which they are referred to.
In the end, I'm not suggesting we should replace the word "cyclist" with some comvoluted phrase. All I'm saying is that maybe we should be more aware of what we do when we use this word rather than simply what the word "means" in a legal sense.
I think part of the problem is that the concept attached to 'cyclist'* has become removed from that of 'person'. Which makes it easier, when reading the word, to bring to mind a lumpen 'tribe' (whether your view of that 'tribe' is good or bad), rather than a feeling, fragile, and flawed person.
Personally, I have been trying (and commonly failing) to refer to 'people/person cycling/driving', but breaking the habit of using the shorter 'cyclist/driver' isn't easy. It can also impact the fluency of what you're writing, but in a way, perhaps that's the point - it seems not fluent because it breaks with what we expect and forces us to think differently.
( and, to an extent, 'driver' too, although there's more of a tendency there to use the depersonalised 'car'. )
Exactly that!
I agree in some ways with your concern about "cyclist" but there are several driving forces keeping this as it is - dictionary usage, the common stereotypes and also some self-identification ("reclaiming" a pejorative use of "cyclist").
Most of that covered well here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMed1qceJ_Q
Ultimately it's not the words which make cycling convenient or safe. Especially not in the microclimate of road.cc. I would agree that overall for leaders (politics, business, media) the ideas about cycling and how "most people" consider it can have important effects however.
Thank you!!! Great video!
I am perfectly happy to be included in the same category as absolutely everyone riding a bike. Why aren't you? Again, which more-virtuous cycling tribe do you want to be a member of in order to differentiate yourself from the bike riders you appear to look down on?
We're all comrades here
Wait - I'm not?
Comrade Stevenson obviously meant "everyone riding a cycle"
Does that include the penguins?
Obviously - it's not like they're gonna fly instead
I think we are all happy to be described as cyclists. The issue is the othering that comes with it from people that just hate cyclists. I would like the press to use human on a bike instead of cyclist when reporting RTAs and legal stuff.
I'd rather we just concentrated on a free and impartial press rather than letting Murdoch take control. If we stopped putting oil and cars at the centre of everything, then people would understand better that cycling is a solution to lots of problems.
John, the point is that we don't need a tribe at all. It's not a matter of looking down or up to anyone. Simply, I don't feel that somehow I have to belong in the same category as someone else simply because there's a bike involved. That kind of categorisation doesn't help anyone, except those who screech with anti-cycling hysteria every five minutes.
Part of the point of including absolutely anyone under the umbrella of "cyclists" is that we aren't a collective and that the category shouldn't carry any meaning apart from "someone cycling". When idiots complain about "cyclists", we need to remind them that we want idiots out of cars and onto bikes - they'll cause less harm that way.
OK, I'll have to think about that one. For me, the categorisation says to the world that someone cycling is indeed part of a collective, and that ends up fuelling the "collective X vs collective Y" kind of story that pollutes so much media discourse.
Problem is, conflict between motorised and non-motorised road users is baked into road design except in rare situations where there's high-quality separated provision for cycling. If you want to fix this conflict, you'd be far better joining your local and national cycling campaign groups than trying to change the way language is used.
You could, of course, do both...
I agree with the first point you make. However, strategies, or solutions, are not mutually exclusive. Joining a cycling campaign group is a great thing to do, but that doesn't mean that the language we use can't change too.
Sometimes it makes sense to subsitute "welly-wearer" and see how that affects the sense. "Fury over council plan to create 1.5 million pound lane for welly-wearers" - well that's certainly how many people see this. Equally from the other side "police autumn campaign encourages welly-wearers to wear reflectives and carry lights" sounds almost as futile to me as doing this with cyclists.
But this trivial and silly exercise immediately points to the fact that actually there is a bit more to a grouping of "cyclist" than those sporting waterproof footwear. You'll not see "Die-in protest after 5th welly-wearer killed at major junction". Also "Can wellies help combat climate change?" and "The missing key to children's independant mobility? Wellies" are unlikely.
So cyclist (as noted) is all these things: neutral description of fact*, pejorative / stereotyping and its opposite ("call me a cyclist? Well I am then, as opposed to non-cyclists") and tribe (tribes). The latter sometimes at cross-purposes with other groupings ("As an avid cyclist I get extremely cross when I see {insert cycle infraction here}").
* I really wish we had the equivalent of Dutch "fietser" although "cyclist" seems to be taking that meaning here at least.
You don't end bigotry by appeasing it. If 'cyclist' is being used as a pejorative, the way to defang it is to embrace it.
If you're riding a bike, then you are part of a category — people riding bikes — that uses road space in a certain way and has a common set of vulnerabilities especially compared to drivers. Declining to accept that seems to me perverse. What are you trying to achieve by it, and how do you expect it will bring about that outcome?
Cycling advocates moved beyond this years ago by campaigning for provision for cycling. It makes not one jot of difference to petrosexual lunatics frothing about cyclists in local news site comment sections.
Ok, people riding bikes:
* someone on a Sunday club ride
* someone on a solo off-road ride
* a child riding a balance bike in a park
* someone going to work by bike
* someone on the Pro peloton in a Tour stage
* someone riding on the pavement while looking at their mobile
* someone riding a bike that they've just stolen
* someone on a turbo trainer
The list could probably go on. That's not a category of people except in the eyes of those who wish to demonise cycling.
There's nothing to embrace. We're not talking about a derogative racial term.
"Bad Headline of the Day" would be any news story that doesn't follow the Road Collision Reporting Guidelines
https://road.cc/content/news/road-traffic-collision-reporting-guidelines...
So pretty much any story in the Car Crashes into Building thread.
Thanks for starting this thread. Let me try and address some of your points.
First, the words “cyclist” and “driver” (and by extension “pedestrian” or “horse rider” etc) do in fact define who people are within the specific context of their use of the road – these are the words that are used in the Highway Court, in legislation, and in the justice system.
You may not define yourself as a “cyclist” when you’re riding your bike – but the law does. So it’s different to the other examples you provide (although I’d mention that while writing an email may not make you “a writer,” it would make you “the writer” of that specific email).
The changes made earlier this year to the Highway Code has also underlined the official approach to categorising road users by the means of transport they are using at the time, including through the new Hierarchy of Road Users, aimed at protecting the most vulnerable.
I’ll come back to the specific story you mention later on this post, because it comes from the US and first I want to address the broader issues we face in the UK in terms of tribalism.
We have always sought to underline that it is more likely than not that here, people who ride bikes also drive cars (in fact, the likelihood of someone who cycles regularly to own a motor vehicle and hold a driving licence are consistently found in consumer research to be slightly higher than in the population as a while).
Where the story merits it – one kind of story that comes to mind is when we are reporting on an anti-cycling column in a newspaper, or ‘debate’ on radio chat show – we will usually draw attention to the overlap between cyclists and drivers.
We won’t do that on every single story we publish that mentions a “cyclist” or a “driver” – it’s just not practical to do so, and we credit most of our readership to understand the nuances beneath those words, after all we’re aware that while they will be on road.cc because it is a cycling website, they are also drivers.
Does road.cc have “the moral obligation to counter the normalisation of the ‘cyclists vs [insert other category of people]’ narrative,” as you put it?
Well, we like to be accurate (and are required to be so under the Editors’ Code, but I’m not sure “moral obligation” is the correct way to phrase it, but in practice, as outlined above, we do counter it through explaining the background where it is pertinent to do so.
To go back to the earlier example, that includes by reporting on “inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images” (as the Editors’ Code puts it) that have been published elsewhere (with certain media outlets or commentators, of course, regularly featuring).
I like your final suggestion. I’m not sure that Bad Headline of the Day would merit a series of standalone articles in the way that Near Miss of the Day does, but certainly something where we could consider a Forum thread or regular comment on the blog.
EDIT - Sorry, forgot to add the below:
PS – Going back to the story you highlighted, we do have certain criteria we consider in trying to determine whether the story is about a “cyclist” or a person who happens to be riding a bike, ie how central was the bike riding to the story?
One typical example involves assaults – sometimes it is clear that someone assaulted by a gang is an innocent victim who was maybe riding home from work (which would make it a cycling story), in other cases, the person may have been attacked because they are a member of a rival gang and just happen to be on a bike (so not a cycling story). At times, it’s unclear from the information available which situation we are actually dealing with.
Added to that, it can be a particularly difficult call to make at weekends, since we run a skeleton staff then which makes it more difficult for whoever is on news duty to seek a second, third or even (perhaps unsolicited) fourth opinion on whether to cover the story or not.
In this case, yes it was a borderline one but the cycling was I think relevant to the story, so we were correct in covering it.
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