Courting Milloy? Better call on St. Jude

A couple of weeks ago, Courtland Milloy went on a bike ride with Veronica Davis as a follow up to his much-criticized column about cyclists. And he wrote a column about the ride in which he continues to complain about cyclists, although now for all new reasons. 

The City Paper has a couple of good pieces about it. Aaron Wiener writes about how little Milloy's opinions changed as a result of the ride, though he has shifted gears to a concern about the safety of cyclists. 

To Milloy, bikes and cars don't mix, at least not in a busy city like D.C. "When you're mixing bikes with cars, I don’t think that there is a feel for how much danger lurks down the road in a place like this," he says. "You’re putting bikers on a street designed for cars, trucks, at a time when you have boom cranes swinging around."

And Jonathon L. Fischer tries to make sense of Milloy's columns, both of which are pretty scatter-shot. 

The growth in bicycling in D.C. coincides with (and is certainly related to) the city's profound demographic changes, which is why bicycles and bike laneshave taken on such totemic power. And the perception that bike lanes only benefit D.C.'s mostly white, mostly young, mostly affluent arrivistes isn't helped by the fact that the city's poorest, blackest wards hardly have lanes at all. But the way to ensure better behavior by everyone toward people using other modes of transportation isn't finger-wagging columns, and it certainly isn't making life harder for one mode or another. It's having roads for everyone, with clearer signs and better rules.

But WTOP makes it clear that Milloy's opinions are not changed - not that I'm surprised. He strikes me a little like a 4 year old who has made a scene over not liking guacamole before trying it, and is now hellbent on not liking it - no matter what it tastes like.

Milloy added was asked if the experience of riding through rush hour traffic had changed his perception of cyclists. "Fundamentally no, it has not changed" he said. What about having to dodge car doors being opened into the path of his bike, or having to squeeze past trucks and cars parked in the bike lanes, did he see things from the cyclists point of view? No, he said. "What has changed is that I know for SURE that I don't belong out here on a bicycle" because it's too confusing to move through the different traffic patterns.

Milloy said "I don't know what I'm doing out here, just like most of these bikers out here."

There's plenty in here to find fault with, so let me just pick out a few. 

But I’d been too busy fidgeting with the gear shifts on my handlebars to notice. Of course, if I had collided with the car, the driver would have been at fault. That’s because in this bike-friendly city, the driver is always wrong.

This is one of those myths that pops up pretty regularly. Of course, anyone who follows the coverage of bike crashes in DC knows that it isn't true. Cyclists get assaulted and when the police show up, they get ticketed. A cyclist in a bike lane with a green light can get run over and killed by a dump truck and the driver won't even be ticketed. A cyclist can be standing out of the way, get run over by a Humvee and the driver walks away. A cyclist can be run down from behind by a hit-and-run driver, who once caught, doesn't even get a ticket. 

And that’s my biggest problem with bikers on D.C. streets. Too many of them bike like me. They are clueless. Wouldn’t know a “cycle track” from an Amtrak.

That's odd, because such a claim never even makes an appearance in the first column. If it's his biggest problem, why leave it out? He threw everything else out there. Furthermore, it's just not true. The average cyclist out there knows very well what they're doing - if they didn't they'd be in more crashes. And he tries to single out CaBi riders, even though the available evidence is that bike share cyclists are pretty safe. [CaBi riders ride around 2 miles per trip. If we assume that to be the average for all bikeshare riders then bikeshare is approaching 46 million miles. There was one automobile fatality every 47 million miles as recently as 1990].

Cyclists are no more clueless than drivers  something that Milloy demonstrated when he showed that he had no idea how to merge at a mixing zone,

Milloy asked how it was that cyclists and drivers were supposed to know where to position themselves in and near the green painted bike boxes, or who had the right of way though areas known as "mixing zones", those broken lines that allow cars to slide across the bike lane from the center to make a left turn.

That is something that a driver should know right? If they don't, then they're clueless. Where is the problem-having with such clueless drivers? 

To avoid a car door swinging open, bikers are encouraged to ride in the middle of the lane, “so we are completely visible to motorists,” Davis said. Bikers have a name for that. It’s called “taking the lane.” I call it impeding traffic.

Well then, Milloy is not interested in sharing the road. If after being told that taking the lane is the safest option, he still opposes it without contradicting that claim, then what he is saying is that safety is not the primary goal; the unimpeded movement of cars is. How can we have a discussion about sharing the road with someone who's values are so skewed from the norm?

When a biker cuts into a line of bikers, it’s denounced as “shoaling,” but when a biker worms his way to the front of a line of cars waiting at a light, then meanders along without letting anybody pass, it’s a right.

I'm not personally bothered by shoaling, but there are a few differences here. First is that a moving bike takes up more space than a stopped one because the cyclist moves side to side to power it, so while there is space next to a stopped cyclists, there may not be enough next to a moving one, meaning that everyone has to sort themselves out quickly. The same is not true of a car. Second is that by moving ahead of cars, bikes make themselves safer, which is why cities (including DC) are adding bike boxes. 

In the other articles he makes more errors.

"Some of the best bikers, the guys who look like they’re part of some racing team, they’re more dangerous than the ones who don’t look like they know what they’re doing," he says. Because motorists "won't run over a crow," he argues, they get "spooked" when they see bikers coming toward them at high speeds in their side-view mirrors. "Bikers, they get away with some good stuff, man," he says. "People don’t know how many fender benders are caused by that thing."

Where is he getting this stuff? Not from any experts or data. It would serve him to learn about this stuff before he talks about it. There is just no evidence that any of this is true - except that people probably do not know how many fender benders are caused by bikes. It's probably not many though. And if drivers are getting spooked by law-abiding cyclists in the side-view mirror and getting into fender benders as a result, perhaps they shouldn't drive. 

Among them, Milloy said, is having bikes registered at the local DMV, just like cars. He suggested bikes should have license plates that should be lit so that they could be seen at night.

"If we're going to play 'rules of the road apply to everything' then let's do it," he said.

That's not rules of the road, that's new rules of the road. But, following that out, I guess we should require motorists under 16 to wear helmets. And allow cyclists on interstates. And allow cars on sidewalks. That's ridiculous. Which is why we don't play  'rules of the road apply to everything.'  And no cyclist advocates for that. 

Comments

[Tina]

Welcome back from vacation. So glad you caught us up on the Tragedy of Milloy.

[fongfong]

Why bother with this chucklehead? Washy, you are way too analytical for the likes of Court, so to analyze his musings as you would a court, err legal, opinion will just be a waste of time. Clearly, he speaks and writes before he thinks. And spending time pointing out his inconsistencies is not worth the effort. Being coherent for a writer would seem to be something of value. That his sense of logic is such a failure says great things about his editors, who must really have their work cut out for them.

I am happy to know that my 5 1/2 year old son is a better bike rider than him. Look out for that puddle!

[DE]

You had to ruin that nice vacation vibe by reading Milloy. Bummer for you.

His whole premise that cyclists are a menace because they don't know what they're doing simply because he doesn't know what he's doing was remarkably easy to spot as flawed. Hard to believe that he is allowed to write for the WP.

When I got to the part where horse poop and Segways* were the big concerns for cyclists, I had to close article for a while.

*Okay, Segways are a *bit* of a problem, but I'd rather collide with one of them than Milloy in his SUV while he was fiddling with the shifter.

[DE]

I do think the bikeshare contributes to cyclists on sidewalks downtown, btw, even if their record with crashes/injuries is good.

[NeilB]

Two things:

1. Milloy's assertion in the WTOP article - "Milloy says cyclists, like many Washingtonians, seem to think they are "special" and act entitled. In an aside, he lay the blame at the feet of the GOP." - is just bizarre, and left out there with no explanation.

2. Regarding the concern about bikeshare riders, here's a recent article from Slate. "Here's an astonishing fact about U.S. bike-shares: In seven years and some 23 million rides, not a single death has been tied to the programs."

[Smedley Burkhart]

It's the politics of resentment. Cycling and race are issues, which seem to bring it out in its most florid form. Any associated reasoning is usually post-hoc and almost always primitive.

[jeffb]

Well then, Milloy is not interested in sharing the road. If after being told that taking the lane is the safest option, he still opposes it without contradicting that claim, then what he is saying is that safety is not the primary goal; the unimpeded movement of cars is. How can we have a discussion about sharing the road with someone who's values are so skewed from the norm?

Sadly on this point I think Milloy is with the majority of the driving public.

Sure, in the abstract, most drivers will readily support safety for all. But the actual moment when any driver feels the least bit inconvenienced while waiting behind a cyclist on a narrow road most will put prioritizing their needs over the cyclist's safety.

Just read the comments section on the WTOP article regarding the hit & run last week. See how many commentators completely shift all the blame from the criminal actions of the motorist onto the cyclist.

[jeffb]

2. Regarding the concern about bikeshare riders, here's a recent article from Slate. "Here's an astonishing fact about U.S. bike-shares: In seven years and some 23 million rides, not a single death has been tied to the programs."

But does that take into account the number of induced cardiac events from attempting to power these heavy bikes up Meridian Hill?

:)

[DE]

I like "the politics of resentment." I stated in the first Milloy article that he was acting like a conservative Tea Partier, with his "if you don't do it my way you are doing it wrong" mentality. I think that "politics of resentment" phrase is good because it can describe the mindset of people from either extreme.

[washcycle]

Yeah, when I went on Chris Core's show I remember having an exchange that went something like this.

CC: cyclists in the road force drivers to make unsafe moves in order to pass them
Me: No, drivers can just wait until it's safe to pass.
CC: We're not going to do that

And I wish I'd said "Then THAT's the problem. If drivers are unwilling to make safety a priority, then no behavior changes in cyclists are going to fix that."

And cyclists are guilty of this too. We sometimes trade safety for expediency. But, we usually trade our safety for our expediency. We don't normally demand that others take on more risk for our convenience.

[Smedley Burkhart]

The (very small) Libertarian in me asks, "Who the hell's business is it if I take risks on my harmless little bicycle?" That's between me, my family, and my insurers, especially in a contributory negligence state.

[DE]

I do think some sort of arrangement needs to be made on rural two lanes. I spent two weekends in a row on the Skyline Drive, and at the speeds cyclists like me can maintain going up those mountain roads, it is an onerous requirement of motorists that they 1) must give 3 feet and 2) can't cross the center line except in passing zones. In that scenario, it could be miles before a passing zone and 20 minutes before someone could pass.

[NeilB]

DE: that's why some states (California, for one) have a requirement to give way when 5 or more vehicles are waiting to pass you. Signs like this one are common in western states. They are intended for slow motor vehicles, but the law applies equally to bicycles.

Smedley: I get where he was going in the first sentence, resentment and all. I don't understand the bit about blaming the GOP. What does the GOP have to do with anything?

[Doug G.]

Note that Milloy didn't address the two biggest complaints about his story:

1. His tacit approval of violence against cyclists.
2. His belief that only gentrified neighborhoods are getting bike lanes.

He didn't answer them because he knows there's no good defense. So what does he do...

The classic technique of the bully is not to answer honest critiques, but to deflect and find new problems with his opponent. Watch any cable news show or listen to any politician make a non-pology for saying something offensive. It's easy to spot.

No one will ever convince a guy like Milloy that he's wrong because he doesn't want to be convinced.

[Michael H.]

Bizarre that he cites boom cranes as a hazard for cyclists. What?

It does remind me of an incident many years ago in D.C. I think it was in Foggy Bottom, during construction of one of the buildings on Washington Circle. Either a load of concrete or other construction debris or equipment fell off of the building or a crane. It smashed through the roof of a car, right behind the driver's head. Fortunately, the driver escaped uninjured (miraculously!).

I tried to look up the article but I can't remember the key details.

[Mike]

@DE: god knows, the most important thing on skyline drive is going as fast as possible so you can get to the end

[DE]

Right, but no driver wants to be going 5 mph up a steep hill for 15 minutes, scenic views or no. I mean, as a cyclist, I would move over as far as reasonable when it appeared safe to do so, but if I were a driver and had a Park Police vehicle behind me, I would have no idea what to do. You have to give 3 feet, yet you aren't supposed to cross the center line, so either action could get you in trouble, yet going 5 mph up a hill for 15 minutes is likely to seriously try the patience of the officer behind you as well.

[Mike]

@DE: I've never seen someone refuse to cross the center line to pass a bike, as they had to do even before the 3ft law (because there simply isn't enough room on many roads to pass in-lane). The only change with the 3ft law is to make it clear that they should leave more space for the cyclist.

[DE]

True, I've done it myself, but it's technically illegal in the jurisdictions I know of, and you wouldn't want to do it in front of a cop.

[Mike]

@DE: I've never had a cop behind me while cycling that didn't do the same thing. There's the letter of the law and then there's what people actually do. The important part is that the passing is done carefully.

[Bill on Capitol Hill]

If a Park Police officer is involved, you can be sure he'll find some reason to ticket the cyclist.

[jeffb]

Can't say if it was deliberate or not but I was riding Hains point last weekend and a park police officer in a patrol car did the ole windshield washer trick just as he passed me.

[Purple Eagle]

It would not be Park Police in Shenandoah. They only operate in few urban areas. It would be NPS law enforcement.