We Need to Calm Down
This article was originally published, in slightly different form, on Strong Towns member Will Gardner’s Substack, StrongHaven. It is shared here with permission.
(Source: Flickr/Minneapolis Public Works.)
The other day, I saw my neighbor’s kid, a sixth grader, riding his bike home down Pleasant Street in our town of Fairhaven, Massachusetts. He was chatting with a friend and they were riding side by side, but not taking up more than one lane of travel. A note to my local readers: neither of these kids is part of the group of kids on bikes that have been causing all sorts of moral panic in the past year (a topic for another time). Just two kids on their way home from school.
As I passed by on my way down the bike path, I waved hello. Just then, a car pulled up close behind them. The driver, clearly exasperated about being inconvenienced, tailgated the two children for a moment before honking loudly at them and motioning for them to move aside, pulling away angrily as they attempted to squeeze next to a parked car. This driver was likely headed home, which couldn’t have been more than a few blocks away (we live on a peninsula).
I stopped my bike to check in with the kids, who were fine but a little rattled. I let them know that they’d done nothing wrong: it was absolutely their right to take the lane like that. They added that they’d been told by other adults not to ride on the sidewalk. By law, when a street like this lacks a dedicated bike lane, people on bikes are allowed to ride either in the street or on the sidewalk. Given the slow speed limit (20 mph) on the street, it makes sense to give sidewalks over to pedestrians and for bikes to ride in the street.
Baby on Board
I can empathize with the driver. She’s on her way home after a long day, cruising along at what feels like a reasonable speed for this street. It feels reasonable because of the street design. (See here for a discussion of design speed using this very block as an example.) Then she pulls up to these kids on bikes taking up the lane, a rare sight in an environment increasingly designed to keep kids off streets and safely buckled into backseats. She of course doesn’t want to hurt the kids, but passing will momentarily put her in the same lane as oncoming traffic. Waiting behind them, given the speed she’s used to traveling on this stretch, might feel like an incredible inconvenience. From her perspective, they may have left her with no choice but to honk and shoo them away from her path.
There’s something unique to being in a car in the U.S. that gives us a certain sense of entitlement. Perhaps it’s the video-game-like nature of driving nowadays. Within our climate-controlled console, filled with buttons and dials, we’re under the illusion that what we see on the windshield is just another screen that bends to our immediate will.
I can’t recall who originally made this analogy, but it’s worth noting here: It’s far less likely that the woman in this story would act the same way outside her car. If she were pushing her cart down the aisle of the grocery store, would she yell loudly at a couple of kids in front of her who happened to be moving more slowly than her? Probably not. I strongly doubt that, if this were happening in Stop & Shop, this woman would even think of threatening these kids with something that could kill them.
When we are behind the wheel of a car, most of us tend to forget that the world outside is our community, filled with real humans, including our neighbors’ kids. We forget that the 3,000 pounds of steel that we so effortlessly pilot has the ability to kill and maim in an instant, as happens over 100 times per day in the U.S. I’m not here to tell a morality tale or shame the driver in this story. While in this situation, she has certainly played the role of the knucklehead, I wouldn’t single her out for particularly flagrant knuckleheadery. That would distract from the actionable part of this.
Don’t Hate the Player
The hidden culprit in this drama is design. Good street design accounts for the deadly size imbalance between people and cars. It prioritizes the safety and comfort of people outside of cars through things like pedestrian islands and curb extensions. It induces slow car speeds within neighborhoods so that the vast majority of drivers are not surprised and irritated by signs of life and community, like kids on bikes taking the lane. A kid biking home from school on a neighborhood street is a good sign! It means that the streets are safe and comfortable enough for at least a few brave kids to be in them. Rather than shoo that kid away or scare him off, we should be following his lead (without tailgating). Behind him are hundreds of other folks who, if our streets were just a bit more accommodating, would be out there, too.
Livable Streets
In the spirit of this post, Fairhaven’s Bikeways Committee is changing our name to the Livable Streets Committee! Our new name is intended to reflect our broader mission of making our streets safe, comfortable, and productive for everyone, including kids like my neighbor’s kid and my own. We’re going to work from the ground up to bring about positive change in our streets and encourage active transportation throughout town. Good street design doesn’t have to be expensive. We shouldn’t have to wait years for government grants to make it happen. Our hope for the Livable Streets Committee is that we can enlist neighbors in the work of improving our streets. Those of us who are out there every day can see where small changes could make a big difference.
Will Gardner is an education consultant and the founder of Alma del Mar Charter Schools. He’s currently scheming about how to improve his town, but he’s happy to help you with whatever you’re working on. You can find him at StrongHaven.substack.com.
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