This was originally posted on my old blog on 12 January 2017.
I can think of few better metaphors for our roads than my kids’ school. It was established more than 100 years ago, the building erected with spacious passages, if you consider the maybe two or three hundred pupils it catered for at the time. School, back then, was really for nerds (forgive the stereotyping in this article, it’s to prove a point): your more brain-strong than body-strong types, and of course they were all male.
As the years rolled by, school changed. It became common for more than just nerds to finish to Leaving Certificate level, so the school got fuller and fuller. The demographic changed from nerd-heavy to nerd-light. The doors were opened to girls, too. Additions were made to the school building, but there’s legacy infrastructure that catered to a very different need. Those spacious passages are actually really narrow, now that two or three times the number of pupils need to move through them.
Consider, now, the experience of nerds, the behaviour of jocks. The rowdy, energetic, strong, and often physically big jocks are by their very nature intimidating to nerds. Some of them are perfectly polite, but simply unaware of how they make life difficult for the smaller nerds when they stride down the narrow passage as if they own it, unconsciously offering the nerds the choice between being shoved aside or shrinking out of the way. Others delight in their power, and will go out of their way to intimidate nerds, veering just ever so slightly closer as they push past, laughing when the nerd is shoved or steps aside. Even in small, petty doses, power gives a big high. Still others are aware the nerds feel intimidated, but believe might makes right, and the nerds must just deal with it.
Then there are the nerds. Their life can be made a complete misery by the daily ordeal of trying to get books from their lockers while big, rowdy, often intimidating and loud jocks stream past. Being bumped into; for the girls, unavoidably coming into physical contact they would usually avoid, with boys they didn’t choose to rub against (and who most likely didn’t choose to rub against them, sorry, but the passage is so narrow, or perhaps they were even shoved into the girl when they themselves would rather have avoided physical contact).
It strikes me as illogical to solve this problem by getting the nerds to wear a bright waistcoat marking them out as nerds, and helmets to complete the uniform. When it comes to road safety, visibility is an issue, especially at night, but the inherent visual marking of vulnerable road users with what can be classified as a uniform has wider implications for social group issues, which are extremely powerful inhibitors to sustainable transport uptake. One can absolutely achieve visibility without using the standard, ugly, meaning-laden high visibility vests.
The solution to the problem lies in addressing the behaviour of the powerful, not in coaching the vulnerable to stay out of their way. Like all kids have a right to use those passages without stress or fear, just so all people have a right to use the roads without stress or fear. It’s not happening right now, so we have no choice but to make big changes. If you drive, you are the jock. Be aware that your mode of transport is inherently dangerous and intimidating to those around you, and drive accordingly: carefully, slowly, patiently, giving vulnerable fellow road users a wide berth to show you’re not going to harm them, and for the love of all that’s holy, stay out of their designated space.
You can be a jock without being a dick. It’s time we started aggressively insisting that everyone using the roads makes that their mantra.