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As an American who grew up feeling annoyed and aggressive toward people driving motorcycles, but now drives a motorcycle regularly for the past 10 years, it nev
by yosito 4y ago
As an American who grew up feeling annoyed and aggressive toward people driving motorcycles, but now drives a motorcycle regularly for the past 10 years, it never had anything to do with how poor someone was. Motorcycles aren't the most practical vehicles on American roads, so I always perceived them as a sport, not a necessity. And motorcycle drivers has a reputation for pulling stupid stunts and causing accidents on the highway. 19 year old kids would buy sporty motorcycles, drive 2x the speed limit on the highway, swerving between lanes of traffic, doing wheelies, etc. Or a gang of gnarly men would ride into town and parade through the streets on their Harleys. When these are your stereotypes of people on motorcycles, any time there is a motorcycle approaching you or blocking you, it's easy to feel annoyed and aggressive. Motorcyclists (and cyclists) are not seen as poor people choosing practical transport. They are seen as hobbyists pursuing a luxury at the expense of others' convenience and expectations.
Of course, I don't see things this way anymore but I'm fairly confident that this is a common mindset.
- bombcar 4y agoCyclists (of both kinds) are also rare enough that people are usually “surprised” by them because they can be in a blind spot much smaller than a car. Anything that is “surprising” while driving cause stress and anger reactions.
- hinata08 4y agoimagine having a car suitable for driving on a road I have a small city car, and cyclists aren't in a blind spot
- HPsquared 4y agoCyclists are perceived as the opposite: hobbyists who go too slowly and hold everyone up. By the simple act of riding down a busy street, a well-placed cyclist can necessitate hundreds of questionable overtaking maneuvers as each car has to pass them. "Trail of chaos" in other words.
- alpaca128 4y agoAnd most of those cyclists would love to be on a bike lane instead, but those often just don't exist. From personal experience it's also annoying when I get hate from car drivers who assume I deliberately use the road instead of the "bike lane" which is in fact only meant for pedestrians, but try to explain that in half a second while passing and when the official road markings are only visible with forensic tools.
- deaddodo 4y agoWhile LA is hardly a paragon of bicycling accessibility, it does have a ton of dedicated cycling routes (I’m talking 8-12+ ft wide, dedicated pathways) that can get bicyclists to most of the major hubs throughout the city. Even still, you’ll see the occasional bicyclist(s) who wants to drive down Washington Blvd during rush hours Because-They-Can(TM) and the cycling path is a little too inconvenient for them, holding up hundreds of cars. I have nothing against the majority of bicyclists, but those occasional entitled few are the only ones people see; which can easily paint their opinions of all of them.
- burnished 4y agoHow outrageous, they want to use the infrastructure like they're people?
- deaddodo 4y agoIt's almost like, in a society, you sometimes give up some of your personal entitlements for the greater good. It's why you'd also be called entitled for using an elevator for your personal enjoyment, for defecating in a public pool, for playing around in a turnstile or for refusing to get vaccinated during a worldwide pandemic.
- foldr 4y agoIf we're talking about people giving up personal entitlements for the greater good, car drivers should be the top of the list.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoOnce on the way from NYC to a long island beach, I saw about 10 or 20 on crotch rockets just splitting traffic and doing crazy stunts down the parkway. I'm pretty sure some new stereotypes were born in me that day, but I never saw that happen again (though I didn't live in NYC for very long, just a few months).