The Importance of Identity to Relationships Between Motorists and Cyclists

A lot of my work that I have done over the past couple of years at university has dealt with the issue of identity. This has generally had a pretty wide focus, but principally looking at racial, national and gender identity. However, this got me thinking on the issue of identity in other issues, particularly cycling. After watching the BBC’s widely-criticised documentary The War on Britain’s Roads I got thinking about how our various identities as ‘cyclists’ and ‘motorists’ seems to affect our behaviour and our attitude towards the behaviour of others.

Much of my university work has drawn on the thinking of Benedict Anderson. In his 1983 book Imagined Communities Anderson views communities as a social construction, which is created through the imaginations of people who believe themselves to be part of it. In other words, a community is created by people thinking that they are a member of said community. Although Anderson was specifically referring to the concept of the nation, his ideas have been extrapolated to refer to many other identities.

Except the identity of ‘cyclist’.

Until now…

What I am interested in is how our identities as ‘cyclist’ or ‘motorist’ affect our behaviour attitudes towards others

I am a ‘cyclist’. I ride my bike in cycling-specific clothing a number of times a week, often for nothing more than to enjoy the experience of riding a bike. Across the UK there are a few million other people who do a broadly similar thing. These people will also call themselves ‘cyclists’. Although I will only meet a very small fraction of these people, by calling myself a ‘cyclist’ I am becoming part of a very large community.

However I also drive a car, but would not call myself a ‘motorist’. Because I do not think of myself as a ‘motorist’, at least in my own mind, I am not a part of the ‘motorist’ community. There are millions of people across the UK who do see themselves as ‘motorists’. Cars interest them as much as bikes interest us, and are much more than a method of getting from A to B. Many of the members of this community will be professional drivers.

The fact that I drive a car and yet do not see myself as a ‘motorist’ raises the issue of how this can be turned around and applied to riders of bikes. There are many people that I see on bikes who I expect do not see themselves as ‘cyclists’. If you’ve just grabbed your rusty 50 quid mountain out of the shed to pop round to the shops, you’re unlikely to see yourself as part of a wider community of fellow cyclists.

It is also necessary to look at how the identities of ‘cyclist’ and ‘motorists’ can be created negatively. In other words how these identities can be imposed on people through the imagination of others. For non-‘cyclists’ there is no distinction between ‘cyclists’ and blokes on 50 quid rusty mountain bikes. Everyone man, woman and child who is riding a bike is seen as a ‘cyclist’. Of course the reverse is also true. When I am riding I view all car drivers as ‘motorists’, regardless as whether they see themselves as a member of the motorist community. When I am driving I expect I am viewed as a ‘motorist’ by ‘cyclists. It is this negative creation of imagined communities that generally affects our perception towards others.

Part of being a member of any community is a recognition that you’re actions affect other members of the community. In this context this generally means that as ‘cyclists’ we recognise that bad behaviour on the roads will negatively affect the attitudes of drivers to other members of the cycling community. Personally this is the reason I try to behave well when I’m cycling. I always stop at red lights as an attempt to break the stereotype that cyclists always run red lights.

However for the bloke on the 50 quid mountain bike, this is not an issue. For him, riding through red lights and riding on pavements only means that he can get to where he needs to be faster, and has no effect on others. But because drivers view him as a ‘cyclist’, his actions have an effect on the perception of drivers towards the wider cycling community which he is not a part of.

This therefore is the issue that is faced by the UK today. Different perceptions of what is a ‘cyclist’ is constantly shaping the relationship between motorists and cyclists on our roads. Often through the actions of people who would not consider themselves as ‘cyclists’, we are all being tarnished with the same stereotypical brush.

I have struggled with a conclusion to this piece. Much of this struggle has been thanks to my attempt to try and see the link between identities and the relationship between cyclists and motorists as somehow problematic, needing to be broken . However, if it is impossible it seems incredibly difficult to solve. Motorists who are not ‘cyclists’ are unlikely to ever be able to distinguish between ‘cyclists’ and people in bikes in the way that ‘cyclists’ do. We are therefore faced with two options:

(1) Educating the bloke on the rusty mountain bike to follow the laws of the road. This option seems highly problematic and unrealistic. This would require the man to be in some way linked to the cycling community in order to receive this education, which is unlikely to be the case.

(2) Increasing levels of cycling so more motorists are also cyclists. 9 out of 10 members of British Cycling are also drivers. This would explain why cyclists are in general able to resist applying negative stereotypes of bad drivers to all motorists, recognising that it is a small minority who behave poorly. If more drivers are also cyclists, then the distinction between ‘cyclists’ and people on bikes would be more widely recognised, and the negative stereotypes which surround all law-abiding cyclists would be forgotten.

And of course, this preferred second option also gets more people into cycling. Which is never a bad thing.