By Jonathan Yardley (yardleyj@clark.net)
The Washington Post, December 1, 1997
Doing a long stretch of brisk walking in Manhattan the other day, I found myself easing back into habits that had been learned while living in that strange and wonderful place 3 1/2 decades ago. New Yorkers, for all their rudeness and pushiness, have an extraordinary tolerance for the rhythms by which others live. A Manhattan sidewalk is choreographed by some mysterious higher power, allowing each person to move at his or her private pace, without interference or insult.
There is one notable exception. The odd camaraderie of the New York sidewalk is repeatedly interrupted these days -- as I was reminded by several near misses of my own -- by bicyclists for hire, messengers and deliverymen who repeatedly violate (a) common courtesy, by riding recklessly and with utter contempt for the pedestrian, and (b) the law, which forbids riding bicycles on sidewalks. Generally they do so with impunity, for until recently the police, presumably on the assumption that they have more urgent matters to which to attend, often winked at these violations.
That is true no longer. A few nights ago a visitor from New Jersey stepped onto the sidewalk after dinner at a restaurant on the Upper West Side. One can only hope he enjoyed his meal, for it was his last. The unfortunate gentleman was broadsided by a bicycle deliveryman -- for something called Chirping Chicken -- and killed on the spot.
The one happy consequence of this most unhappy event was that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani promptly ordered, and the police promptly undertook, a crackdown on illegal cycling. "Bicycles are a very big quality-of-life problem," the mayor said, according to the New York Times. "It may be the thing that was most mentioned to me when I was campaigning, particularly in Manhattan."
All of which leaves one to wonder whether there is any chance that word of this might filter a couple of hundred miles to the south. Though there are many differences between New York and Washington -- sidewalk manners, for one thing, are a good deal worse here than there -- the downtown centers of both cities are plagued by the bicycle menace. If gendarmes of the District of Columbia can find time to hand out exceedingly expensive parking tickets for the most trivial offenses imaginable, is it too much to hope that they might find time to cite a homicidal bicyclist or two?
Civic complaint not being as deeply ingrained here as it is in New York, not much has been heard about the marauding cyclists, but that is scarcely an accurate reflection of reality. As one who often walks the sidewalks of this city, in particular those of the area roughly bounded by Union Station to the southeast and Dupont Circle to the northeast, I have been endangered more times than I care to remember by helmeted cycle Nazis rushing their unimaginably urgent business from one office to another, and I have seen innumerable others similarly put at risk. Am I alone in thinking this a threat to public safety that should be attended to by what passes, here, for local government?
Probably I am not. Yet the predictable response to any call for action against illegal and irresponsible cycling will be bleats and moans from the Birkenstock crowd, wailing about ozone depletion and global warming and auto emissions and all the other ills for which bicycles are alleged to be the ultimate cure. Any threat to messengers and deliverymen on wheels, it will be claimed, is a threat to all those angels of mercy who keep their cars in the garage -- if they own any at all! -- and cycle in high righteousness around and about the points of their compasses.
The argument is arrant horsefeathers. Crackdowns on stupid and reckless motorists, whose numbers are legion, pose no risk to safe, law-abiding drivers; quite to the contrary. Why should action against stupid and reckless cyclists have any different effect on those who ride safely and within the limits of the law? For that matter, if a sidewalk is off-limits to an unsafe rider, why should a safe one be allowed to use it? Sidewalks are for pedestrians, not for people on wheels, unless they are in wheelchairs or other devices for the transportation of the disabled.
It is quite true, as one Manhattan deliveryman told the Times, that cyclists "sometimes ride on the sidewalk to be safe from cars." There are relatively few spaces in Washington or any other city that are set aside for cyclists, with the result that they often must cope with conditions that are set, albeit unwittingly so, to their disadvantage. Obviously, as more and more businesses turn to cycles as speedy alternatives to automotive gridlock, this must change. The establishment of special lanes and other privileged zones for bicycles should be part of any comprehensive approach to the cycle problem.
But tolerating intolerable risk to pedestrians is hardly the way to go about the job. As a dedicated walker (talk about self-righteousness!), I have long and occasionally vivid experience of the ways in which motorists blithely threaten the safety of pedestrians in crosswalks, intersections and parking lanes, among other places. But at least cars don't use sidewalks, except for the rare one that lurches out of control. There is no prevailing assumption that cars have some "right" to use sidewalks. But people who ride bicycles make just such an assumption about themselves and the vehicles they ride, and -- so anecdotal evidence suggests -- the police silently abet them in this.
If some higher public good were being served by this menace, perhaps a way could be found to tolerate it. But the deliverymen are carrying pizza and fried chicken, and the messengers are hauling legal boilerplate and other junk. All this is about as urgent and pertinent to the commonwealth as the literary endeavors of a fourth-grade composition class. We put up with it because an offended public is slow to express itself, much less to organize, and because the bellicose, bullying behavior of thugs on wheels cows the rest of us into reluctant acquiescence.
Well, since everyone else on this benighted planet is whining the chorus of victimization, why can't we poor pedestrians get in on the act? Rocket-powered cyclists careering around sidewalks are far greater threats to far more people than most of the other nuisances against which huge, fierce lobbies have assembled. So let's get nasty and put the bicycles in their place: the street.
Reply from the District of Columbia Bicycle Courier Association to Mr. Yardley's article, "Messenger of Mayhem" in the 12-1-97 washington post Delivered to the Washington Post, 12-6-97
Dear Editor:
Jonathon Yardley's Washington Post article "Messengers of Mayhem," dated 12/1/97, exemplifies a very distressing bit of demagoguery I'm not used to finding in the pages of the Washington Post. It is a surprisingly ambiguous and disappointing piece of journalism which does little to address the accusations it raises. In addition, Mr. Yardley employs abusive phrases and elementary literary chicanery like "helmeted cycle Nazis" and "bellicose, bullying behavior of thugs on wheels" to bolster his weak position. Although the article appears to target bicycle messengers, it by no means exempts cyclists in general from being categorized by behavior Yardley refers to as a menace to urban society.
Ultimately, his lack of information and the generalizations he uses to cover his tracks are offensive to anyone who regularly negotiates the city by bicycle, regardless of whether they do so for a living or not.
As it happens, there are several hundred individuals who are employed to ferry various items via bicycle all over DC; the majority of these people work as bicycle messengers. It follows that there are thousands of individuals utilizing the service of bicycle messengers, many of whom probably consider the value of the items delivered for them as something more than "the literary endeavors of a fourth-grade composition class." Hundreds of those same packages are delivered by messengers to the Washington Post every business day.
On one hand, the article does bring to light some very serious issues regarding the safety of pedestrians and cyclists in urban centers. Riding a bicycle on DC sidewalks within the downtown business center is forbidden, and violating this rule might result in confrontations between pedestrians and cyclists. Unfortunately, Mr. Yardley's message is lost in the kind of hyperbole which declares that:
"Rocket-powered cyclists careening around sidewalks are far greater threats to far more people than most of the other nuisances against which huge, fierce lobbies have assembled."
Clearly his priorities were overwhelmed by his zeal, but what is more tragic is that the real issue of public safety is shunted in favor of his apparent vindictiveness for cyclists. Obviously, cyclists just like pedestrians, are forced to adapt to grid-patterns designed to move a great deal of vehicular traffic along very congested urban corridors.
Many "near misses" occur when one or the other of these parties (sometimes both) operate outside of the established rules of the road. These activities are not limited to sidewalk riding, but also include: pedestrians standing in the street while waiting for a light to change, cyclists riding the wrong way on a one-way street, individuals riding or walking against red lights, and jay-walkers crossing the street between stalled or parked cars. All of these activities are potentially dangerous, yet all are committed everyday by many cyclists and pedestrians who are trying to make the most of their time while negotiating a cityscape dominated by 2000 lb. automobiles.
Ironically, the focal issue of Mr. Yardley's piece involves the unfortunate death of a New Jersey man who was killed in New York City after being struck on the sidewalk by a person delivering fried chicken. For all of the relevancy revealed by these points, the title of his piece - addressed as it was to a Washington audience - might well have read: "Chicken Fingers of Death Terrorize Manhattan Sidewalks"; or "Gotham Chicken-Eaters Order In; New Jersey Man Checks Out." Certainly the few facts presented by Mr. Yardley creates a more nebulous chain of blame than the simple answer of decrying the obvious dangers of the "bicycle menace." None of this, however, pertains to DC bicycle messengers. The delivery person mentioned in his article was not a messenger, and the incident in question did not occur in Washington, DC.
Bicycle messengers are routinely injured in traffic accidents in scenarios which, regardless of blame (and the messengers do not own a disproportionate share of it), find the messengers at a severe safety disadvantage compared with the operators of motor vehicles. I work as a cycle messenger. I will say without reservation that as a result of riding my bicycle in the city five days a week all year long, I have experienced several "near-misses" as well as scores of stitches and a few broken bones accrued from some near-fatalities. Some of these incidents were my fault, others were not; I am not infallible. I am careful to avoid all collisions, however, because my health and life depend upon staying out of those situations. Because there are no safety valves available to me (corridors, ramps, lanes or other bicycle specific avenues), I must compete for space and time with autos and their operators, many of whom have little regard for my safety, in an environment which clearly gives them the advantage. When in doubt I have taken the safe road over sidewalks, and though I have never come closer to hitting a person on the sidewalk than I might have done while walking with my bicycle beside them, I know this to be wrong. But until such time as equal precautions are made available to pedestrians, cyclists and motorists alike, I will be forced to protect myself in an environment where I consider the rampaging tons of steel all over this city a greater health risk to public safety than human-powered bicycles.
Mr. Yardley asks "if is too much to hope that they (DC police) might find time to cite a homicidal cyclist or two," making light of the enormous toll that real homicides take on this city every year, while failing to produce evidence of any pedestrians killed by cyclists (let alone messengers) in the District of Columbia, on the sidewalk or anywhere else, over the last several years. In fact, there have not been any, but I know that conversely, many pedestrians and cyclists have been maimed or killed by motor vehicles. What shall we do Mr. Yardley? Employ more cars? I suggest that if the Washington Post and Mr. Yardley want real solutions, they should find the proper "huge, fierce lobbies" to exhort who might have some answers to the questions of public safety on the streets and sidewalks of our city. In the meantime, more responsible journalism could be issued which does not utilize inflammatory rhetoric and jr. high-school literary devices to fancifully de-construct pertinent safety issues.
James Kerns
Vice President, District of Columbia Bicycle Couriers Association
More letters to the washington post editor - Re: "Messengers of Mayhem"
To the Editor
As a professional Bike Messenger, I have found that the interchanges based on generalized ignorance are the most hazardous part of my job. In Jonathan Yardley's December 1st article "Messengers of Mayhem," Mr. Yardley makes several common misjudgements. Very often there is no interest in the reality behind the vision of a, "homicidal bicyclist.,"" helmeted cycle Nazis..." This polarization of urban cyclists, specifically messengers, with the "rest of the public," is often difficult to navigate when the players are so alienated from each other.
This attitude explains why someone has to lean on the horn and yell out their window, "Get off the street, bikes belong on the sidewalk." It also helps me understand motorists who try to kill me with their cars. Then there are the icy stares in the elevators, the refusal of an office "professional" to allow me to use the restroom even though I'm about to wet my pants. It explains why UPS can go in the front door and I must go around the back to the loading dock where cretins harass me because, I had it coming, after all, I'm a woman and I'm a messenger to them I'm one step up from a prostitute.
It is tragedy when any cyclist hurts, maims or kills a pedestrian. Particularly when the pedestrian, a gentleman in NYC, was doing absolutely nothing that should've put him at risk.
As a messenger of nearly six years, I myself have nearly been hurt by idiots on bikes in traffic. Everyone of them was either an urban interloper (week-end warrior type) or a rookie messenger. We messengers tend to police our own. A veteran messenger will get just as hot over bad riding as anybody.
So the leap in the assignment of blame, blaming all messengers for bad cycling is misguided. There are hundreds, thousands of messengers, one never hears about. Why? They somehow manage to go to work day after day, year after year, taking chances and not getting themselves or anyone else hurt for that matter. That is skill. Considering the number of times a messenger could be maimed killed or do others damage on a 10 hour shift, a 5 day work week, it is quite amazing that these incidents in NYC and Boston are really quite rare.
They are tragic all the same. There is some selective attention going on, though. Around the same time of the "Chirping Chicken" incident, a bus driver, also in NYC, had an epileptic seizure, his bus drove out of control hitting a bike messenger and sending this messenger flying through the air. The messenger did not survive.
There are irresponsible people in every sphere of life. Why on earth was an epileptic man allowed to drive public transportation? I've seen pedestrians flout the law and cause car wrecks. I've nearly been hit by motorists running red lights.
The difference I see between a grousing pedestrian and myself is that when I break a law, I pay attention. More than that, I pay attention to the pertinent matters. I feel for an office worker, the tourist or other similarly distracted individuals. For whatever reason, they have difficulty processing the urban scene. In my six years as a messenger, I have worn out more than a dozen pairs of shoes. I didn't wear them out riding my bike, I wore them out walking. Suffice to say, I walk quite a lot. It amazes me how pedestrians seem to have so much difficulty walking around towns. I myself have yet to have a problem with a messenger running into me, even when I jaywalk. Thank you, Mr. Yardley for opening up this debate. Instead of finger pointing and alienation, the better option is to reason the argument and collect the facts.
Lambchop
RE: Bicycle Messengers commentary in Washington Post
To: Jonathan Yardley
I was a bicycle messenger in Washington, D.C., in 1992. I have since moved to San Francisco where I am a freelance reporter for,among other publications, the Mercury News and Rodale's Bicycling mag.
Jonathan, I was profoundly dismayed by the meanspirited tone of your essay in the Post, to wit:
" If some higher public good were being served by this menace, perhaps a way could be found to tolerate it. But the deliverymen are carrying pizza and fried chicken, and the messengers are hauling legal boilerplate and other junk. All this is about as urgent and pertinent to the commonweal as the literary endeavors of a fourth-grade composition class. We put up with it because an offended public is slow to express itself, much less to organize, and because the bellicose, bullying behavior of thugs on wheels cows the rest of us into reluctant acquiescence."
Jonathan! These people are earning a living in a trade that is a) underpaid, b) uninsured, c) nonunionized, d) extremely competitive!
I didn't judge whether my deliveries were worth delivering when I was a messenger! I had a job to do.
It is consummate arrogance for you to speak so vindictively of the trade of messengering. People support families as messengers. Furthermore, yes, more bikes means less pollution, less mayhem on the street. Jonathan, cars kill. Bicycles rarely cause anything worse than bruises. You wisely noted the lack of bicycle facilities in D.C. I think your energies would have been better spent expounding on that regrettable subject, because therein you will find the root of bicylist behavior.
There is nowhere safe to ride in a city. Not just D.C. or SF. Anywhere. People don't bike commute because it isn't safe. People who do, have to stoop to the same degree of daily misdemeanor as an automobile does, simply to stay afloat on the street. How often do you see a car run a red light or switch lanes without signalling? That is behavior that kills bicyclists.
We had two bicyclists, two pedestrians, and one motorcyclist killed by reckless car drivers in downtown San Francisco in the space of one month this year.
Who is the problem? What's creating this mayhem? Why has Critical Mass spread from San Francisco to more than 40 cities around the world?
Because cyclists are an international community, and a marginalized one at that, in desperate need of recognition as a legitimate and important presence in the unrban landscape. You are right, an idiot on a bike is a bad thing. But that person is an idiot first, not a bicyclist first. Perhaps you should be glad that person is on a bike, and not in car.
Please address the issue at hand: A dominant, intolerant car-culture which enforces unsafe city streets and is a global pollution problem. Recognize that bicyclists have adapted to the situation they have been given.
Please, Jonathan, if you really are a reporter, then you know where to put your meanspirited editorializing. Do the job right, report on the problem. Why don't you try riding your bike to and from work for a week?
Come on. You can't very well shoot your mouth off on the subject if you don't immerse yourself in the lifestyle.
Josh Wilson
Re: Jonathan Yardley's - "Messengers of Mayhem" The Washington Post, December 1, 1997
To the Editor
Mr Yardley's column begins with one of its few truths - bicycles do not belong on the sidewalk, but his article quickly descends into another ignorant attempt at vilifying the bicycle messenger community. It is fraught with opinion based on unsubstantiated, anecdotal evidence and biased perceptions. Just because Yardley disguises his column as a commentary, it does not relieve him of a responsibility to journalistic ethics - such as the truth. His comments are akin to a book review based solely on the book's jacket notes and photographs without bothering to read the book's contents. (Is that how he reviews books?)
If Yardley's concern is with the behavior and threat of messengers, it would serve him well to search for some truth. The reality is that messengers are routinely the victims of bigoted stereotypes put forward by people obstinately and unreasonably attached to their opinions. It is unfortunate that the "extraordinary tolerance for the rhythms by which others live" does not extend to common couriers. Yardley cannot find a local incident in Washington to promote harassment of messengers so he imports one from New York City. He should also import some statistics and facts from New York.
There exist no studies, statistics nor facts to show that bike messengers cause more accidents or injuries to themselves or others. In 1992, the Automobile Insurance Society of Quebec prepared a study on the safety concerns involving bike couriers based on the "experience, opinions and perceptions of municipal authorities in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, New York City and Washington, D.C. as well as those of cyclists' associations in Canada and the United States." This study concluded that couriers' "behaviour draws attention because their clothing and bag make them more visible," and in fact couriers "have no more of a propensity for accidents per kilometre travelled than other bicycle riders...and for that reason caution is advised in imputing accident risk to couriers in order to justify specific intervention targeting this type of road user."
The tone of Yardley's article is completely and absolutely prejudicial. We are to believe that Washington is "plagued by the bicycle menace" and "messengers of mayhem," which consist of "marauding cyclists," "helmeted cycle Nazi's", and "rocket-powered cyclists careening around sidewalks." "The bellicose, bullying behavior of these thugs on wheels cows the rest of [Washington] into reluctant acquiescence." Sounds scary.
Meanwhile, the dangers of the roads which scare many cyclists on to the sidewalks in the first place, are dismissed as coping with "conditions that are set albeit unwittingly so to the [cyclist's] disadvantage." These same roads killed 761 cyclists throughout the United States in 1996.
Yardley is also upset that the police might not "find time to cite a homicidal bicyclist or two." "Homicidal bicyclists" are Mr Yardley's fairy tale. The "real threat to public safety" on the sidewalks is the motor vehicle. Although three pedestrians lost their lives to cyclists in New York City over the last two years, it has been many years since a sidewalk cyclist has resulted in a fatality. In fact between the years 1989-1994, the average number of pedestrians killed by cyclists each year was ZERO. During the same period an average of 284 pedestrians were killed by motor vehicles each year including 9 killed, and 483 struck, by cars on the sidewalk (Yes, that is each year and not cumulatively.) This year alone 15 pedestrians lost their lives to motor vehicles on the sidewalk.
Although the homicidal bicyclist is non-existent, the police do find the time to cite the average messenger for all types of "intolerable risks to pedestrians" such as riding without commercial identification. This year New York City police issued 9,867 summonses to cyclists.
It is clear that the most serious threat to public safety is related to cars yet some pedestrians, like Yardley fail to the recognize the overwhelming evidence. The reason may lie in the fact that most self-proclaimed pedestrians spend most of their transportation time in a motor vehicle. I suspect this is also true of Yardley. (How does he commute from Baltimore - power walking? )
In addition to inflaming anti-messenger sentiment, Yardley also attempts to vitiate the value of the service provided by bicycle couriers. He wonders "if some higher public good were being served by this menace, perhaps a way could be found to tolerate it." And he rejects the service as "urgent and pertinent to the commonwealth as the literary endeavors of a fourth-grade composition class". Washington's messengers provide many advantages to the city. They not only provide benefits in the areas of " ozone depletion and global warming and auto emissions, " but also reduce other forms of pollution such as noise and smell. Messengers make the streets and sidewalks safer for pedestrians because they replace cars that kill and injure many pedestrians every year. They also save the money that would be necessary to treat these injuries. They reduce traffic gridlock and congestion. They do less damage to the roads, take up less space and save the city and its taxpayers money on construction costs. They act as goodwill ambassadors, providing information and directions to tourists. They provide a fast, efficient, value added service that Washington's business and legislative community not only relies upon but insists upon. They are sought out by businesses to increase their profits and reduce costs and stress in the workplace. Couriers save these institutions an inordinate amount of money every year. Their speed is the last line of defense against office workers' and executives' natural tendencies toward procrastination.
If Yardley is sincere in his concern for pedestrian safety, he will condemn the harassment and prejudice toward any type of road user. He will call for increased enforcement and education of all road users on an even handed basis. He will demand Washington to look toward ways of improving its design and use of its roads and he will want efforts directed at spending the limited tax dollars in a way that considers the welfare of all Washington's residents.
Joe Hendry
Toronto
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