I got this cycling thing all wrong.
Somehow I foolishly thought that the government and the BMA and everyone else who has been talking up the idea of cycling were thinking in terms of public transport.
Silly, silly me.
It now seems that cycling is an activity with a number of purposes, but none of them are related to using bikes to get somewhere.
These alternative purposes include showing monarchical devotion and national unity (please wear blue if you can); physical exercise for the middle classes who have enough money to buy day-glo lycra outfits but not enough sense not to wear them; and an impersonation of a bicycle-friendly city so that visitors from countries where people actually cycle to go somewhere will think we are like them.
When we’re not.
This explains why the website bikeformom2015.com crashed as soon as it opened from the rush of applications for a 43 km ride (43? Really? At 3 in the afternoon? Do survivors get a medal?)
It also explains why cyclists are encouraged to use, and expected to be grateful for, a track out by the airport that you need a car to get to.
And it explains why Thai society remains inimical to real cycling. By that I mean real people using real roads for the purpose for which they are primarily intended, as a means of getting from A to B.
There is a streak of blind indifference towards cyclists in your average motorist, with a small minority displaying naked hostility, offset by a similarly small minority showing courteous consideration.
Which is hard to fathom. In the average collision between a vehicle and a bike, the occupants of the vehicle have a near zero risk of death or injury. This is true whether or not the cyclist has been indulging in those petty infringements of the highway code, like undertaking in traffic jams, or filtering left on red lights whether or not there is a sign permitting this.
Cyclists, on the other hand, pose a significant risk to only one other kind of road-user – pedestrians. This occurs if a cyclist for some reason mounts the footpath at speed. Or is invited there by BMA planners who think that marking two parallel lines running down the middle of the footpath constitutes a cycle path.
You see, in their make-believe world, traffic planning means simply getting everything out of the way of motorized traffic. But unfortunately, putting bicycle lanes on footpaths inevitably means, with the general wilful disregard for traffic laws and despite large police signs to the contrary, that they become motorcycle lanes. This greatly increases the danger to pedestrians. And can be blamed on cyclists for asking for bicycle lanes in the first place.
Using a bicycle on a regular road marks you out as someone so impecunious that you can’t even borrow enough for a second-hand Wave, and are therefore a member of the underclass who can be ignored. Or, more subversively, you could be someone who has rejected the duty of buying the most extensive set of wheels your credit can buy and flaunting them to the fullest extent possible. Which in some people’s eyes, constitutes an insurrection against social norms that warrants more than indifference.
Bangkok Post’s Sirinya Wattanasukchai discovered the hard way what status cyclists enjoy in Bangkok when she was bowled off her bike by a taxi. The taxi driver, miraculously unscathed of course, was quick to agree to the traffic policeman’s ‘everybody equally guilty’ suggestion. When she refused that, the taxi driver suddenly decided she had run a red light. Off to the station where again she was presented with the police panacea for all incidents from road accidents to rape: ‘Be sensible, agree among yourselves, pay compensation if you must, but don’t give us any more work’.
Until she pulled out her Bangkok Post ID and it registered in some police brain that, like diplomatic passports, military IDs and suits that walk in with at least 3 lawyers, this signalled that the case needed more judicious handling.
Yes, cyclists don’t pay road tax. Neither do they cause any more wear and tear on roads than pedestrians crossing the street, also tax-free. And they cause no emissions (while suffering disproportionately from other people’s). Yes, cyclists regularly break the rules and zip up the inside of motorists chafing in jams. But they don’t regularly break the speed limit like most vehicles with far greater risks to everyone concerned. And yes, they have this annoying habit of getting off and turning into temporary pedestrians to exploit the never-ending traffic light cycles and get an early start on the other side.
But they, and their insubordination to the boorish cultural norms on Bangkok’s streets, are not going away.
About author: Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent column in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running ‘Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).
