Why is Jef the Bicyclist so goddamn annoying?

A recurring character in Stephan Pastis’s comic “Pearls Before Swine” is Jeff the Bicyclist, introduced in this comic. Jeff (who in a future comic jettisons the final ‘f’ in his name to save a few micro-ounces) is arrogant, self-entitled, self-involved, superior, and a total asshole. And all too much like too many of the bicyclists that I encounter, like the Critical Mass asswipes in San Francisco who decided to ride the wrong way up a one-way street, came across a car they didn’t feel was being deferential enough to their assholeness, and proceeded to attack it, doing $2,000 worth of damage. Just another set of arrogant Massholes doing their best to make San Franciscans regret adding bike lanes and other features to make bicycling safer in the city. Jef the Bicyclist would approve.

So then I thought about the Netherlands, which is famous for having more bicycles than cars on many of their streets. And I was was looking at photos of Dutch streets filled with Dutch bicyclists and realized: they’re completely unlike American bicyclists, something noticed by a Dutch rider who did some tourism in America too. The first thing I noticed was that the bicycles they’re riding are completely different from the bicycles that people ride here in the United States. The European bicycles generally have fenders so they can be ridden when the pavement is wet (American bicycles have no fenders and will shower your legs and back with water from the tires), and they generally have enclosed chain guards to keep the chain and sprockets from snagging on clothing, road debris, and random small children. They are practical bicycles intended for transportation rather than racing or posturing, in essence what American bicycles were like back in the 1950’s, before the first 10 speed “racing” bicycles hit the streets and led the way to today’s American “street” bikes with their drop handlebars and 18+ gears, which are either racing bikes or derive their fundamental look and feel from racing bikes.

The second thing I noticed was the riders themselves. They weren’t dressed in spandex like superheros. They weren’t wearing special shoes that clamped onto the pedals. They were young, they were old, they were male, they were female, they were all ages and all levels of physical fitness, some lean, some hefty. They were just… people. Dressed in regular people clothes. Wearing regular people shoes. Doing regular people things. Bicycling to these people is not something they do to make them feel superior to other people. It is something they do to get to work or school or to the local grocery store (thus the basket on the front of the bike and the rack on the back of the bike). They don’t act arrogant about having chosen an alternative lifestyle choice when they encounter non-bicyclists, or insist upon inconveniencing other people because it’s their rights, man. They just act like people going about their business.

So what’s the difference? One of the biggest differences is this: In the Netherlands, car lanes are for cars, and bike lanes are for bikes. If you ride a bike in a car lane, you will get a ticket. This works in the Netherlands because most streets have bike lanes and there are bikeways (basically separate two-way streets with curbs between them and car streets) in locations where bike traffic is especially heavy. If a street doesn’t have a bike lane, you aren’t allowed to ride on that street. And there is, of course, also the opposite — significant portions of Dutch inner cities allow no cars at all on their main streets, only bikes are allowed, and only trucks in the delivery alleys.

Bikes in bike lanes, cars in car lanes, a ticket if either gets into the other’s lane. No “share the road” in the Netherlands. The result is that the Netherlands has 1/10th the bicycle fatality rate of the United States — despite the fact that the Dutch rarely wear bicycle helmets and ride their bikes to work and school in wet slippery weather where our bicyclists are nice and dry in SUV’s. What this points out in glaring 100 point type is just how big a failure “share the road” is. It simply is impossible physically for cars and bicycles to share the same roads safely, due to differences in mass, differences in speed, differences in psychology.

So because bicycling is so unsafe here, ordinary people don’t ride, because they’re scared of being hit by cars. So our bicyclists aren’t the mixed bag you see in the Netherlands. They’re young men. Young fit men. Young fit men riding racing bikes who each think they are Lance Armstrong training to win the Tour de France, and thus riding faster than is safe on something with such tiny tires in the midst of so many 4,000 pound moving steel death machines. Young fit men wearing bright spandex to stand out against the background and be visible to drivers, but this spandex also makes them look weird and alien to ordinary people, like superheros whose capes have gone missing. And because bicycling is so dangerous here, the only way to ride safely is to inconvenience drivers — that is, to be an asshole. You have to ride in traffic lanes with a group of other bicyclists, because trying to ride in the gutter will get you doored, tire-sliced on all the glass there, cut off when cars take right turns, and run over when cars back out of driveways. You have to inconvenience cars to stay alive.

In short, the problem with the American “Share the road” system is that the only way to stay halfway safe is to ride like an asshole in ways that inconvenience motorists. So the hobby (because it’s a hobby here in the US, not a method of transportation) attracts more than its share of assholes, because non-assholes try it for a bit, say “damn, this is too dangerous unless I behave like an asshole and I feel like shit if I behave like an asshole”, and go find something safer to do.

Thus Jef the Bicyclist. Who is a product of the failure of “Share the road”, because only assholes willingly inconvenience other people on a regular basis. Ordinary people like me, we get tired of being assholes and we either stick to bike lanes and bike paths, or we go into mountain biking instead. But Jef the Bicyclist? He’s out there in his full spandex glory, inconveniencing people left and right both for safety’s sake and simply because he legally can. And illegally can, in some cases — in every actual observational study of American bicyclists (as versus surveys asking “have you broken a traffic law lately?”), over half the bicyclists routinely violate traffic laws. Which surprises me not at all, because if you’re enough of an asshole to disregard the convenience of the drivers around you, you’re asshole enough to think you’re above the law — and asshole enough to lie on survey forms (only 5% of the bicyclists admitted breaking traffic laws when surveyed!).

There is only one solution that will end this dismal state of affairs where riding a bicycle is so dangerous that we can’t get ordinary Americans (as versus spandex-clad assholes) bicycling: Declare the dismal failure of “share the road”, and create a massive infrastructure of bike lanes and bikeways. Then follow up by imposing the Dutch system of car lanes for cars, and bike lanes for bikes. Complete with tickets for cars in bike lanes and bikes in car lanes, and automatic confiscation of bikes until tickets are paid when a bicyclist without a driver’s license is ticketed (because Massholes in particular carry no ID and give false identification, making it impossible to enforce the tickets unless you sieze collateral). This is the only way you’re going to make things safe enough for bicyclists to make it something that can be done for transportation rather than as a hobby. Until then, you’ll get what we have — a “Share the Road” system that doesn’t work because it violates fundamental laws of physics and psychology and requires bicyclists to be blazing assholes or be road kill, thus selecting for young testosterone-fueled assholes who further drive people away from the notion of bicycling for transportation.

We are going to have to live denser in the future as this world runs down. Electric cars require enormous resources and we can’t fit electric cars on the denser streets we’re going to have in the future. Bicycles have to be a major part of that solution. But we aren’t going to be able to get there until we have a system where everybody — not just that arrogant asshole Jef the Bicyclist — can feel safe enough to ride a bicycle for shopping and work, not just for recreation. And we aren’t going to get there at all if we let Jef the Bicyclist be the face of bicycling, but I haven’t figured out a better solution than Rat’s solution there (SIGH!).

– Badtux the Bicycle Penguin