![]() ![]() Maybe that’s why they are easy targets for road rage: Because they look a lot more human than people in cars do, and because they rely on eye contact and hand signals to express their intentions, rather than on blinking lights and sheer metallic muscle. They don’t have a metal shell to protect them. People on bikes, of course, are not equal players in the battle for road space. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. Now Vanderbilt has written a terrific article in Outside about the way that people driving cars and people riding bicycles interact with each other - and the psychology behind the “bikelash” that’s taken hold as bicycles have become increasingly popular as a mode of transportation as well as recreation. It’s all strikingly similar to the way we act on the internet, in what’s called the “online disinhibition effect.” Then there’s the anonymity in traffic – there’s no one to spread rumors or gossip about you about how bad your behavior was - not to mention the lack of consequences for acting like an idiot. What happens to most of us, in most driving conditions, is that we’re losing some of the key attributes that facilitate human cooperation and, in a larger sense, society.Įye contact, for example, has been shown in any number of experiments to increase the chance of gaining cooperation – that’s why when drivers give you what was called on Seinfeld the “stare-ahead,” your chances that they’ll let you merge in ahead of them are greatly reduced. ![]()
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