Most of the attention towards cyclists goes to either the Lance Armstrongs of the world or the Lance Armstrong wanabees who often disregard traffic laws and the rights of everyone around them. In their bright, flashy second-skin clothes, these people are hard to miss. So when the average driver thinks of cyclists, this image is what comes to mind. Nonetheless, this is a grossly distorted picture of cyclists as a whole.
Regular people ride bikes. They ride to work or to school, or they run errands. Regular cyclists are all around us, but due to their lack of pizazz, they generally go unnoticed.
Who would notice a jean-clad guy on a well-worn bike with a milk crate strapped to the back of it, resting on a nearly invisible rack? And what about a woman wearing hiking shorts and a tank top, riding a hybrid bike with a wicker basket strapped to the front? Would anyone notice her chugging along the side of a road? They might. But they wouldn’t remember it because such sights blend into the background and are unmemorable.
Making everyday cyclists more visible, and more memorable to the average driver — or any non-cyclist — would create a different impression of who rides bikes and why. In some countries, like the Netherlands, bikes are so prevalent they are taken for granted. Everyone ranging in age from the youngest child to an octogenarian is expected to ride.
No one bats an eye at the sight of an elderly woman happily peddling along at a snail’s pace with a basket of groceries attached to her handlebars. Neither age nor gender are considered to be barriers to participation in what is perceived as a natural part of daily life.
Riding a bicycle, under those circumstances, is akin to walking or breathing. It’s just something that one does as a part of living.
Yet in America, cycling is viewed as an activity for the young and the fit. The vast majority of American cyclists are male, especially when it comes to things like commuting. Females are underrepresented in this area, although they participate in recreational cycling in larger numbers.
Children ride bikes in sheltered settings, either on bike paths or quiet residential streets. Allowing them to ride to school or to venture away from the security of their street is seen as dangerous.
Drivers don’t look out for children on bikes, probably because there are so few of them on the roads. This wasn’t always true. At one time, kids used bikes to travel around their neighborhoods and to get to school.
Roads were quieter then. Road rage hadn’t been invented. And with a smaller population, there were fewer cars on the roads.
More importantly, people expected to see kids out and about. Expectation yields safety. So kids were safer then.
It’s almost as if our society motorized itself to the point where non-motorized humans could no longer use the roads. Motors, and the lethal speed they created, made roads deadly. Anyone who has been around roads knows of this danger. People go to great lengths to avoid the danger and they try to shield others from it. This avoidance causes people to develop an aversion to traveling along roads without the safety of a steel box around them for protection.
Reversing this trend towards danger to a trend towards safety is the first step in making cycling a mainstream activity. If roads weren’t seen as dangerous maybe the population at large would become aware of the ordinary people riding bikes or walking along the side of the road. They would no longer be an unmemorable part of the landscape.
What if the first step towards normalizing cycling was to make ordinary cyclists rock stars? This is not inconceivable. Average cyclists are more hip than people give them credit for. How do I know this?
As it turns out, I stumbled upon a video made by some cyclists in Newton, Massachusetts which features original biking music and something resembling dancing on bicycles. You really have to see it to know what I mean (fortunately, I have posted the video below).
For those of you who don’t live in the Boston area, Newton is known as an affluent community. While most of its inhabitants are affluent, Newton has its fair share of diversity — although you’d never know it from the things people say about Newton.
The cyclists featured in the video are, as I understand it, members of a local organization known as Bike Newton. This organization advocates for improved cycling accommodations in the City of Newton.
I ride through Newton on a regular basis and have noticed an increase in bike lanes and bicycle parking. To some extent, that increase is probably due to the work of local bicycle advocacy groups such as Bike Newton.
Bicycle advocates usually resort to lobbying to generate interest in and to get funds for bicycle accommodations. Instead of taking the usual route, this organization chose to produce a musical video.
The video features regular people (who don’t look like stereotypical Newtonites, even though they all live in Newton), mostly dressed in street clothes, having the time of their lives riding around on their bikes to the beat of some catchy music.
Whoever edited this video got a little carried away with the effects around the 2:42 minute mark, but other than that, the video is a fairly accurate representation of what regular cyclists look like. And it makes cycling look appealing.
It’s a shame that locally produced cycling videos, like this one, never seem to go viral. Having a large viewing audience would help to spread the word about cycling as a viable mode of transportation for everyday people.
To that end, we must ask ourselves: Can everyday cyclists be rock stars? Watch the video below and decide for yourselves.
