I am the baddie.
Hey, remember a couple weeks ago when I asked "Am I the baddie?" after that encounter I had at a fight competition-thing? I thought a lady ordered me to remove my mask so I confronted her, informing her that I was wearing it because I had just had a cold and still had a nagging cough. Her reaction led Matt and me to think that perhaps I had misunderstood her(?) while she was shouting to somebody else(?) and I had just completely freaked out a poor mom who was just there to support some loved one. In either scenario, it was not an exchange where anybody felt particularly good about it.
So last night I had another encounter.
It's completely unrelated, there is literally no overlap in situation or people or anything. Well, except for me. I'm the common denominator.
Yesterday was my first nighttime bike ride since the sun has been setting earlier and then my stupid country once again participated in stupid Daylight Savings Time (😤) so trust me when I say it was pitch fucking black out at my usual evening go-home time.
Also, it was pouring rain.
Just, fucking bucketing.
I take my bike safety really seriously and I've only been hit by a car twice so clearly it's paying off! If you're ever around Portland and you see a cyclist who almost always uses the bike hand signals (unless it's not safe for them to take a hand off their handlebars) and is sporting a:
High visibility neon yellow jacket,
High visibility reflective pants ankle straps,
High visibility neon yellow rainproof pannier,
Blinking front white light,
Blinking red rear light, and
Helmet with built-in front solid white light and rear blinking red light,
then friend, give me a wave as I (safely) ride by.
So there I am, waiting at an intersection in my full regalia while the rain pours and the only lights to be found are man-made. I'm waiting behind my stop sign to cross over a busy road, and likewise there is a big-ish vehicle (car? truck?) facing me on the opposite side. Here's a diagram:
We're both waiting for a break in the traffic so we can cross without getting t-boned.
It's taking a while.
Somebody nearby honks loudly, with purpose.
Looking up and down the road, I don't see anything out of the ordinary, not even when I check behind me. No clue where the honk came from or why it happened.
Eventually, the cars on the busy road stop at the intersection so we can cross, just to be nice (there's a sign encouraging it at the painted crosswalk, but there's no, like, stop light dictating the flow of traffic).
Something non-bicyclists don't realize is that it can take a surprisingly long time to push off on your bike and get it moving quickly once it's been at a complete stop. It's not like a car, where you just put your foot down on the gas pedal and now this entire 2,500-6,000 pound metal monument is effortlessly gliding forward. Sometimes on your bike you're pushing the entire force of your body weight down onto your pedal and this thing is just baaaaarely inching forward until the wheel makes its first rotation and then it gets into the flow of moving again. In the past I've had drivers who stopped for me get frustrated with how long it was taking me to clear past their lane.
I figured that's what had happened when the facing big-ish vehicle yelled at me as we passed each other across the busy road.
He'd rolled his window completely down and while I did not catch at all what he said in the beginning, I did hear his final "Asshole!!!" perfectly.
What the ever-loving fuck was that about???
I honestly had no fucking clue at all what could have possibly prompted that! As far as I could tell, I had obeyed all the traffic laws, I wasn't doing anything dangerous... The only irritating thing would have been that I couldn't start crossing the road as fast as he could (Although I was making totally reasonable speed!)
I thought about my encounter a few weeks ago,
Sometimes you just happen to walk into the sight lines of someone with their own complicated history that has propelled them to this moment where behaving like a fucking crazy person is their best course of action.
I kept biking.
I biked for another five minutes.
It was dark and wet and I was rattled.
"FRIEND!"
Another bicyclist was sailing down the hill as I was pushing up it. His shout to me was full volume, but with no malice. Just a message he needed me to hear.
Honestly, I don't remember exactly what he said after that, but it was something along the lines of "Turn your blinker off!" (or that it was too bright?)
I gasped and immediately slammed my finger down on my light's button, extinguishing it.
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
Mortified, I switched it onto a solid beam (because you have to have a front light in the dark!!!) and took note of the front light situation on every single other bike I passed. There were about equal numbers of those with a solid beam and those with a blinky light, like I'd had. Was my wattage too high? Does my light strobe faster than normal?? Nothing like this has ever happened before! This is how I've been using my front light for years! Have I been blinding my fellow drivers and bicyclists for years??? AM I THE BADDIE???????
I felt sick.
-----------------
Today was another rainy day.
The rain was much lighter, so I didn't even wear my gloves or shoe covers, though I did still keep my front light on (as a solid beam, not blinking).
At my studio, I consulted with some other cyclists and they agreed that solid beam for the front light is the best practice for the visibility of everyone else on the road, although it's totally fine to have the rear red light blinking.
Man.
Man.
It was me.
I was the baddie.
Sometimes you are the villain of the story.
You know what I genuinely appreciate? The way that other bicyclist handled the asshole (me). He was just as inconvenienced as the driver at the intersection, nobody would fault him for also lashing out at the asshole jeopardizing his safety. What he did instead was recognized the problem (my strobing light was interfering with road visibility) and then he communicated it clearly (without adding emotional emphasis, without acting as if I was intentionally malevolent).
When the driver honked and yelled at me in anger, I had no idea why that was happening and reacted defensively from his attack. It probably felt good for the driver to do this, to berate the asshole who was definitely in the wrong- don't we all want to do that? Everyone wants to possess the faculties in the moment to righteously put The Asshole in their place when they're clearly at fault.
But his (justified) outburst didn't do anything to fix the problem.
The cyclist fixed the problem.
It's a good reminder to me when I'm dealing with my own "assholes."
If an asshole is creating some kind of bad situation and I feel compelled to address it, I hope I can take a moment to first ask myself "What do you want to accomplish here?"
Do you want to righteously vent your frustration at somebody who deserves it?
or
Do you want to make the bad situation stop?
The next time I have to confront an asshole, I hope I channel my cyclist. Even if I only say it in my head, I'm going to start our interaction by addressing them as "FRIEND!"
In any case, I'm never fucking turning on my front blinky light ever again.
Comments (19)
No, you're not the baddie. You acted with no malice. It's probably your mood disorder just doing it's thing: making you second guess and feel bad about yourself. I'm always polite and nice to everybody because it's a no-lose move. If people are cool, they return kindness with kindness. And if they are a-holes, it just makes their blood boil even more.
Honestly I think you’re being too hard on yourself 💕
I think you did some learning and that's good (good for you!), but I'm transfixed by those hand signals. They remind me a little of the rules of the road when I was younger, which I'm guessing were written before you could assume that every car had turn signals, so it was hand straight right for turning right, hand circling for turning left - the other way around for the US, of course. But yeah, I suspect signalling turning right with your left hand, or vice versa, if you're on a bike, would get you on the ground pretty quickly.
Ah, it's still part of the rules of the road - I suppose it makes sense, because you need a backup if the turn signal lights stop working. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/signals-to-other-road-users
Isn't it car etiquette to flash your high beams when the oncoming vehicle has a headlight/high beam issue-slash-faux pas? I feel like there were missed opportunities from oncoming truck to communicate something was amiss before screaming anything that includes "asshole"
That hadn’t even occurred to me and I think you’re RIGHT. If the car had flashed at me, I would have definitely clued in they were trying to specifically communicate something to ME, as opposed to me not even knowing where the honk on a busy road had come from in the first place.
This is a pattern I try (and frequently fail) to keep in mind as a library worker - e.g. a week or so ago a guy came up and complained about ppl being loud, "I didn't know you could talk loudly in the library now," etc. I talked to them and explained we could hear them across the library - they didn't know and were super apologetic 🤷 if you don't know a thing you do need someone to point out the thing
I like the FRIEND approach. I actually saw a bike a week ago with a similar issue with their front light, I was very confused why they had it set to rapidly strobe in a way that could cause a seizure. It's possible they, too, had it flipped to the wrong setting and needed to switch it to a solid bright light.
Recognizing our failings and correcting them makes us "Friend!". Ignorance is only an excuse for the first failing; if one persists, or doubles down, then one graduates to "Asshole!" Feeling bad about it later earns you for a hug.
🥹❤️🩹
I'm going to start mentally yelling "FRIEND" whenever I'm behind another car that either doesn't turn off their turn signal even though they are obviously not intending to turn, or when they don't use one when they absolutely should have. I will have made approximately 20 "friends" a week 😅.
😂❤️
Blinking lights are also illegal in Germany. From an ocular science perspective, they are not as safe as steady lights because the human eye cannot track them well over distance. A steady illuminated light is easier to track and therefore easier to predict/follow and avoid with your huge metal contraption. We Americans think the blinking light is an automatic association with obstacles to avoid (think road construction lights) or an overall caution vibe (think flashing yellow lights) but all of these examples are for stationary objects. A fixed light or reflector is far safer because the eye/brain can actually track the path of the stationary light in the dark. The tiny size of very bright blinking bike lights make them extremely difficult to focus on in the dark (the pupil must increase/decrease rapidly to stay focused on the light). Our reflex is actually to look away or avoid the lights (which is why the big stationary ones work). This approach is actually dangerous if you are on a bike facing into traffic or someone is following you because the viewer will need to look at your blinking light to understand your movement but their brain will be telling them to STOP STARING AT THAT BLINKING LIGHT. Ideally, you want a light that someone can see and track so they know where you are going. I would love to get a grant from some biking foundation to produce a lil comic about this that bike shops could hand out (or even better get the industry to remove the blinking features).
I've was hit broadside by an elderly lady in the daylight during my biking days. She said she never saw me. I had hazard orange panniers! She had to rush across 5 lanes to do it, too. She hit the pedal first, which bent the frame and not my leg, flipped me up on her hood (left hip still hurts on wet cold days) and slammed on her brakes, causing me to fly off onto the road... Luckily, there were a couple of medical professions following me who stopped to assist. The P.A. who stopped was yelling at the lady "You should not be driving!" A couple of weeks later a check from her insurance company for a new bike arrived, which is a whole other story..
What a touching story! It makes me realize that cycling in the US is sooo different from cycling in The Netherlands, where everyone does it (with much less safety features than you have). I think steady lights are legally obligated in Holland, I hardly see blinky lights on bikes. Almost everyone is on electric bikes nowadays, moving way too fast (except me). No one wears helmets (unless your parents make you). I'm confused by your hand signals: we just use arm out for left/right. Most bicyclists in Amsterdam ride like they have the right of way in any situation, and cars basically adapt because killing a cyclist is still a crime (and a great hassle, and will scratch your car). I've been yelled at (by other cyclists) for riding too slow, for taking right of way (when I HAD right of way) and one time by a car driver who was totally right, since I was riding without a light and I startled him and he yelled at me that if he'd killed me he wouldn't have sent flowers to my funeral. That struck a chord. I've made sure I had a light on ever since.
"I wouldn't send flowers to their funeral" Awesome. That phrase will be with me always now! ::: making a list of folks who are "flowerless" :::
I would feel the same as you! I like the "Friend!" option, I need to remember this 🤗
I've never understood why blinking white is even an option
Marketing.