Dear Car Drivers and Cyclists
(as well as those of you that do both)
We have something in common, in addition to our wish to proceed safely along the road.
We like it when people are nice to us. In particular, we like it when our kind act - however small - is acknowledged.
London's streets - which, as established readers will remember, are those on which I drive, cycle and occasionally walk - are riddled with such acts of small kindness. Someone you don't know and will never seen again has just invited you to go first through the narrow gap; and you, naturally, acknowledge that unrequested kindness in one of the traditional ways: you raise your hand, or nod, or flash your lights, or whatever.
And, similarly, the other way around: you offer the space to your fellow road user, and you experience that warm flicker feeling, of commonality and civility and justice, as your act of kindness is acknowledged by the stranger.
(Its opposite - that burst of indignation, precursor to all manner of rage-related incidents, when someone fails to say thank you - is, perhaps, more readily recalled and publicized. But it is the warm flicker thing I want to focus on.)
My experience is that this domain of civilised reciprocity tends to be an intra-group norm: by which I mean that cyclists are nice to other cyclists, and drivers are nice to other drivers, but there seems to be something of a communication problem between the two groups.
I have taken it upon myself to attempt to extend the scope of street-niceness in an effort to bridge the divide. I am now, when riding my bike, offering my thanks in response to quite humdrum but nevertheless essential acts by drivers: waiting until there is enough room safely to pass, or not turning across my path at a junction, or leaving enough room for me at the lights. That sort of thing.
There is no risk, in the absence of my gesture, that they will be continuing their journey with a tinge of indignation: they have, after all, done no more than what they should have been doing anyway. My thinking, however, is that drivers receiving my hand-lift of thanks will experience not merely the warm flicker feeling I have described - they will receive a version turbo-charged by having been unexpected.
I think of it as some sort of benign virus. A civility-meme. A gesture of collaboration. We are, after all, merely trying to get where we're going.
We have something in common, in addition to our wish to proceed safely along the road.
We like it when people are nice to us. In particular, we like it when our kind act - however small - is acknowledged.
London's streets - which, as established readers will remember, are those on which I drive, cycle and occasionally walk - are riddled with such acts of small kindness. Someone you don't know and will never seen again has just invited you to go first through the narrow gap; and you, naturally, acknowledge that unrequested kindness in one of the traditional ways: you raise your hand, or nod, or flash your lights, or whatever.
And, similarly, the other way around: you offer the space to your fellow road user, and you experience that warm flicker feeling, of commonality and civility and justice, as your act of kindness is acknowledged by the stranger.
(Its opposite - that burst of indignation, precursor to all manner of rage-related incidents, when someone fails to say thank you - is, perhaps, more readily recalled and publicized. But it is the warm flicker thing I want to focus on.)
My experience is that this domain of civilised reciprocity tends to be an intra-group norm: by which I mean that cyclists are nice to other cyclists, and drivers are nice to other drivers, but there seems to be something of a communication problem between the two groups.
I have taken it upon myself to attempt to extend the scope of street-niceness in an effort to bridge the divide. I am now, when riding my bike, offering my thanks in response to quite humdrum but nevertheless essential acts by drivers: waiting until there is enough room safely to pass, or not turning across my path at a junction, or leaving enough room for me at the lights. That sort of thing.
There is no risk, in the absence of my gesture, that they will be continuing their journey with a tinge of indignation: they have, after all, done no more than what they should have been doing anyway. My thinking, however, is that drivers receiving my hand-lift of thanks will experience not merely the warm flicker feeling I have described - they will receive a version turbo-charged by having been unexpected.
I think of it as some sort of benign virus. A civility-meme. A gesture of collaboration. We are, after all, merely trying to get where we're going.
Comments