Crosscut’s historian/commentator Knute Berger has, as always, some unique perspective on the conflict between cyclists and motorists. Apparently it goes back a ways.
Both drivers and cyclists have been victims of road rage, and it’s not an entirely new phenomenon. Competition and thrown punches over who rules the roads goes way back in Seattle.
… late-19th- and early-20th-century Seattle … saw huge changes in its transportation infrastructure. We moved from roads of mud and horse manure to paved streets more suitable for a newfangled form of urban transportation — the bicycle — which was followed soon after by the advent of the motorcar, the first of which arrived in 1900. Add to the mix an expanding streetcar system that linked the far-flung parts of Seattle by rail.
Negotiating change was tricky. Bikes created some chaos on the streets. They allowed individuals great freedom, and the ability to dodge in and out of traffic at high speed — bike speeders were called “scorchers.” They sometimes frightened horses and knocked down pedestrians. Bikes were even banned from downtown sidewalks for a time. In 1894, a group of “wheelers” was knocked down by a young lout on a farm horse. The bikers retaliated by beating him senseless. The Seattle police added patrol officers to keep a close eye on the bikers.
Good little article, however to throw in “We should require that everyone take courses that reinforce the rules of the road and a culture of multimodal civility” at the end seems a little tokenistic to me. Who runs the course? What is the content? Who is ‘everyone’ (literally, everyone, including pedestrians?) and who funds it? We need something more practical than that.