Rules of engagement
Maybe Dave Cieslewicz’s article was intended to create some controversy and spark a reaction (“Right to the Road,” 8/25/2016). In me, it has.
As a cyclist, I sometimes experience driver behavior that feels threatening and/or disrespectful. As a driver, I sometimes experience cyclist behavior that feels threatening and/or disrespectful. All roadway users should behave with caution and regard for human life.
While I should expect all users to follow all laws, it’s unreasonable to suggest that I, or any other user, should not take preventative measures to ensure that our lives and the lives of others aren’t negatively affected due to some unforeseen circumstance.
There is a lot cyclists can do to make sure they’re seen. It’s really simple:
1. Always on. Use lights front and rear, day and night. Cars have daytime running lights. Bikes should too.
2. Biomotion. Highlight your body’s moving parts with fluorescent and reflective fabrics. People take notice of things in motion. As a cyclist, your feet are almost always moving.
3. Contrast. Using the right gear for the right time can make a huge difference. Fluorescent doesn’t work at night. Reflective doesn’t work in the day.
4. Defensive behavior. Act like people don’t see you. Make eye contact. Communicate your intent. Don’t sporadically change direction without knowing the consequences.
Until the world is perfect, it’s everyone’s responsibility to take some preventative measures to ensure the safety of ourselves and those around us.
Michael Browne, Co-founder, Ghost Bikes movement (via email)
George Hagenauer (“Feedback,” 9/1/2016) makes some very curious observations and arguments. He seems to think that bicycles should only use roads that are safe and “designed for bicycles,” and concludes that this rules out all but bike trails and city streets. He claims that rural roads in general are in bad repair, lacking shoulders, and have hills, blind curves, and 55 mph traffic! Many of them do indeed have hills and curves (that’s what makes them fun to ride on!), but otherwise my experience does not match his observations at all.
I commute daily on city streets in Madison, and also ride recreationally on the rural roads on many weekends. I find the rural roads to be in better condition for the most part, to have shoulders that you can actually use (city streets, even the ones with bike lanes, are often lined with parked cars, forcing bikes out into the main traffic lanes), and to be safer. Rural roads that are narrow, curvy, and hilly (the best ones for recreational cycling, in my opinion) tend to be quiet back roads with lower speed limits and little or no traffic, and the 55 mph roads tend to be major highways which are generally not hilly or curvy — and which usually have good shoulders! I can’t think of a single rural road in Dane County that combines all of his phobias. The few roads that really are unsafe for cyclists are avoided by most cyclists. Surprise, surprise! In general, we do not seek death.
Dennis J. Kosterman, Former president, Bombay Bicycle Club of Madison (via email)
The naked truth
As an anthropologist who has lived in two Pacific Island societies where women did, and still do in time and place, go topless, I found Steven Potter’s “Au Naturel” (Snapshot, 9/8/2016) puzzling.
The puzzle for me is how women in Madison can achieve gender equality by baring their breasts. If in Madison women’s breasts are sexual triggers for men, how does exposing their breasts make women men’s equals economically, socially and culturally?
The logic of those participating in GoTopless Day seems to be that 1) women’s bodies are shameful and sexual because they have breasts and, thus, women need to cover their breasts, and 2) men can be topless in public because they have no breasts. Biology refutes this thinking: Men and women have breasts. Women’s breasts are larger because women have more estrogen.
What would have been a paradigm change for me would have been if the women kept their tops on and the men sat in the pubs bare-breasted. The article would have then carried statements from participants and bystanders that the men are baring their breasts to show their lack of complicity with cultural notions that make women hide their breasts because women’s breasts are socially defined as “shameful or sexual.”
Diane Michalski Turner (via email)
