Cheap Shots and Lawless Cyclists

On March 15, the Times Colonist published a piece in their Home>Life section by one of their regular columnists, John Ducker. The name of the article is John Ducker: E-scooters are convenient and green. But…

Background

The article was prompted by the City of Victoria's recent decision to participate in B.C.'s electric-scooter pilot program, and it raises some interesting questions about safety. The safety of e-scooters is complicated, as it involves issues like whether protected bike and roll lanes are available, and whether the area has dockless e-scooter rentals (which can definitely be problematic).

As far as I can tell, almost all of the literature on the safety and effect of legalizing e-scooters is about dockless rental programs, like Bird and Lime, but that's not what's being discussed in Victoria. Victoria's participation in the pilot is about allowing people to ride their own e-scooters.

Why does ownership matters? Well, for starters, one of the big complaints about e-scooters is that people leave them all over the place. A peek online suggests that e-scooters cost between CA$500 and CA$2,500, and people do not leave their own expensive possessions lying in the middle of the sidewalk.

Another concern is the number of crashes involving alcohol. While I have no trouble imagining someone stumbling out of a bar, seeing a dockless e-scooter on the sidewalk, and going for an unfortunate joyride, I don't think the person I used to see riding his e-scooter down the Galloping Goose while wearing a business suit was drunk. I think they were going to work.

That said, the article is generally quite reasonable, and points out some of what makes e-scooters attractive, while also raising some legitimate concerns. Hopefully the pilot program will provide answers.

Here Come the Lawless Cyclists

Unfortunately, Mr. Ducker took a cheap shot at people riding bikes. While discussing safety and helmet usage, he said (italics mine):

Fortunately, the province’s e-scooter regulations include requiring the use of an approved helmet. Hopefully people will be more responsible in this regard than the many cyclists who choose to ignore helmet laws.

That doesn’t match my experience here in Victoria, so I decided to walk downtown and track helmet usage on the first 100 bikes and scooters I saw. It didn't take long. I saw people with kids on cargo bikes. I saw small kids riding independently with their parents. I saw senior citizens. I even saw a few e-scooters.

So, exactly how lawless are cyclists in Victoria?

Oh, Wait…

Of the 100 vehicles I saw, including bikes, trikes, e-scooters, skateboards, and one-wheels, 93 had everyone on board wearing a helmet. A 93% compliance rate is very good, thank you.

Unsurprisingly, about half of the people without helmets were teenage boys. The other couple of people were, well, just random people.

In addition, I will freely admit that the down and out people I see riding bikes up near the homeless encampment on Pandora rarely wear helmets. I think they have other things to worry about.

Teenage boys and street people are not known for strict rule following, so if almost everyone else is wearing helmets, I really have to wonder if "many cyclists choose to ignore helmet laws" is just one of those things that everyone knows.

As the management consultant Peter Drucker used to say in class:

What everyone knows is usually wrong.

So, Everyone Follows the Rules, Right?

It would be nice if everyone followed the rules, right?

Not really. I can think of plenty of examples where "following the rules" is silly or even dangerous. And, in fact, when we see situations where people routinely bend rules, it's often wise to sit back and ask quesions like:

Are the rules stupid?
Are the rules overly restrictive?
Would a change in design be more effective than a rule nobody follows?

But since the standard of the day appears to be rigid rule following, I tried to think of another traffic and safety related situation where I could easily count the number of upstanding, responsible, citizens who followed a rule.

After several milliseconds, I wandered over to a stop sign near where I live. I then counted how many people driving came to a full stop. I watched while ten cars came to the stop sign. One came to a full stop. Just one.

I didn’t try to count people driving while using a cell phone.

What's the Point Already?

To start, what I observed is just one data point, in one place, at one time. People on bicycles break rules all the time. So do people on foot. So do people driving cars.

The Peter Drucker quote earlier in this post was from an American Management Association post titled Drucker's Words of Wisdon, and was a summary of an interview with the author William A. Cohen. One of the things Cohen said in the interview was this:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this in his writing, but he said it a lot in class: “What everyone knows is usually wrong.” That’s really an unusual statement, but you can find all kinds of examples of this, from people saying that the earth is flat, to you name it. What it means is you’ve got to think. Even though we’ve been doing something one way for 100 years in our industry, we should think about whether this is the best way or not, or whether there might be a better way.

I can't count how many times I've heard people argue against safe cycling infrastructure by invoking scofflaw cyclists, like this letter in the Times Colonist from way back in 2015:

When was the last time you saw a cyclist pulled over by a police officer for riding the wrong way on a street, or for riding without a helmet, proper lights and reflectors, or for refusing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign or traffic light, or for not signalling an upcoming stop or a turn? Victoria city council is bending over backward for cyclists, and yet far too many of them are scofflaws who apparently have a death wish as they career through traffic without regard to rules of the road, the laws of physics or simple common sense.

The idea of the scofflaw cyclist gets repeated so often that I think it's become gospel; something that everyone knows. I suspect the person who wrote this letter was scared by some idiot scooting through traffic. It frightens me too when people do that, because when I'm driving I'm so aware of the damage that my car can cause. We remember the dramatic incidents, but we don't remember the thousands of people who safely and responsibly ride their bikes to work, to school, to go shopping, or for fun.

But we should. And we should be careful about unthinkingly repeating things that everyone knows.

Some More Light Reading

For those interested in some of the topics I touched on above, here are a few links that I thought were interesting. I don't necessarily agree with everything below, but I think they're all worth thinking about:

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