Abstract
Introduction
The perception that automobility can be achieved through driving technologies is the primary motivator for the desirability of the motor-car (Urry, in this volume; Lomasky, 1997; Rajan, in this volume). As Böhm, Jones, Land and Paterson explain in the introduction to this collection, our belief in autonomy – the liberty to follow one's will – combined with the ability to be mobile permits the rationale that combines privacy, movement and the perception of progress to flourish in the shape of the motor-car. Loren Lomasky claims that autonomy and automobility are fundamental to understanding the desirability of the automobile and the needs of its user. The ‘distinctively human capacity to be selfdirecting’ is optimized by the motorcar (Lomasky, 1997: 7). The motorist is exercising the free choice that they have to do and go as they please, safe in the knowledge that the vehicle for their automobility is good for the purpose and good for the person driving. The Vice President for Research and Development and Planning at General Motors, Larry Burns, makes no bones about the positive connections between automobility, autonomy and the motorcar:
Over time, vehicle ownership will increase dramatically… simply because automobility is an almost universal aspiration. An automobile gives me freedom – the autonomy to go anywhere I want, any time I want, with anyone I want, carrying whatever I require… (Burns, 2002)
In fact General Motors even launched a hydrogen-fuelled vehicle ‘concept’ called ‘AUTOnomy’ at the Detroit Auto Show in January 2002. Burns described it at the MIT Mobility Sustainability Symposium in May 2002:
With a vehicle like AUTOnomy, everyone in the world has a better shot at vehicle ownership. Promises to extend freedom benefits of automobility to many more people, as we make vehicles dramatically cleaner and reduce the cost of advanced technologies like fuel cells and drive-by-wire, goes to the heart of the ownership equation –consumers will choose to buy a vehicle like this because of the exciting new features it offers and the passion it inspires. (Burns, 2002)
General Motors is obviously alive to the concerns of consumers with regard to fuel consumption, pollution and environmental degradation as well as recognizing automobility as ‘an almost universal aspiration’. The ability to travel at speed in the direction that you want, with whom you want, when you want, does appear, on the surface, to confirm the optimistic view of the liberation of the individual from the constraints of inhibited mobility, lack of choices and restriction. People such as Lomasky argue that the motorcar can only enhance our social life by expanding the horizons we have to exercise our social selves. People may want to work miles from where they live, and people may be happy to spend time in their cars, either way the motorcar allows such people to make such choices. The link between the individual and the apparently autonomous nature of motorcar use are seductive elements to legitimizing its increased use.
The car as the provider of autonomy and speed has been the predominant idea supporting the positive benefits of their use. In advertising campaigns it is common to see the latest model speeding, unhindered, through the streets or roads of both the urban and rural landscape. As the deliverer of automobility the car embodies the spirit of freedom, privacy, movement, progress and autonomy. But with car traffic in the UK 15 times the level that it was in 1950 (Transport 2000, 2002) the urban transport infrastructure appears to be creaking under its weight. The problems of congestion, delay and pollution are familiar to anybody who spends any time on Britain's roads. Even the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) freely admits that traffic congestion is a huge problem, costing the UK economy £20 bn per year (Transport 2000, 2002). The paradox is that the desire/need to be mobile is the major contributing factor to the motorcar being a source of immobility. A major qualitative study undertaken by the Department for Transport revealed that the driving public is aware of the major cause of congestion. It was reported that:
The sheer volume of traffic is usually thought of as the main cause of congestion –and this is seen to be growing rapidly and inexorably. ‘There can be nothing wrong with the road, absolutely nothing wrong between Heathrow and here, but you know as soon as the volume of traffic reaches a point of critical mass that it's going to start congesting, and when it starts congesting then everything builds up behind it.' Other more immediate factors may be thought to trigger specific congestion episodes at specific points in time – which are important to motorists, and often the focus of irritation and criticism. However, at root the problem is mainly just put down to the growing number of vehicles. (Department for Transport, 2001)
Transport 2000 statistics also show that eight in ten people expect congestion to get worse in towns, cities and on the motorways over the next ten years. In its simplest incarnation the concept of automobility cannot be properly applied to motorcars. The idea of autonomy is confounded not only by congestion or gridlock, but also by the simple fact of intense regimes of regulation through road traffic rules.
The principal aim of this chapter is to explore the complexities of the way that cycling can provide an apparent alternative to the motor-car as a provider of automobility in particular in urban environments. The role of bicycle use as a potential resolution to the ‘motor-car and automobility’ paradox, as either a direct alternative to the car, or as a beneficiary of the impossibilities of the car system, is becoming increasingly apparent. In 1999 the European Commission produced a report entitled ‘Cycling: The Way Ahead for Towns and Cities’. The report acknowledged that the car had become a victim of its own success, and the most appropriate way of undermining the ‘apocalyptic images of towns that had come to a complete standstill’ is to promote and encourage increased bicycle use (European Commission, 1999: 10). By examining a group of cycle users I will illustrate the inherent tensions between cycling and driving, and argue that there has been an ongoing marginalization of cycling in terms of both urban infrastructure and public discourse. The source of the material for this work comes from a study conducted between 2001 and 2004 into the lives and working conditions of bicycle messengers in the UK. I conducted a questionnaire survey of messengers in the UK and Europe, followed by an 18-month period of participant observation during which I worked as a bicycle messenger in Cardiff, UK. The study was rounded off with 40 semi-structured interviews with messengers from Cardiff and London. This was not my first encounter with bicycle couriers, as I had worked as a messenger for a couple of years before the study. The study of bicycle messengers in relation to automobility raises an important question about types of cycle use as automobile. The fact that messengers cycle for money, rather than for recreation or commuting purposes, sets them apart from other cyclists in relation to autonomy. Although the general point is that the rationale for cycling in the city is speed and efficiency, as well as subsequent health and environmental benefits, messengers’ behaviour is, to an extent, dictated by an economic necessity – the need to complete as many jobs as possible. As will be explored, the difficulty for messengers is that the challenge to car hegemony by the bicycle is tempered by the rationale for messengering being dependent on continued increased use of the motorcar, and the requirement to place themselves in danger to maximize their earning potential. It is widely acknowledged, however, that bicycle messengers are mobile in the world of the automobile. Whilst cars are idling in traffic queues, bicycle messengers are scooting up the outside, jumping lights, skipping pavements, going the wrong way up one-way streets – literally travelling door-to-door. The level of mobility experienced by messengers is one that could not be envisaged by the urban motorist. The bizarre reality is that the urban automobile is largely immobile, and it is this immobility that creates the space – and the demand – for bicycle messengers. Bicycle couriers are one of the finest examples we have of urban mobility. There is a price, however, and the unpleasant trade-off for enhanced mobility to messengers, and to other cyclists, is the risk of injury or death.
The problem with cyclists
There are many consequences for motorists of the failure of the motorcar to deliver the automobile dream. Incidences of road rage and general displeasure with the driving environment are well documented (Lupton, 1999; Marshall and Thomas, 2000). One symptom of the frustration of motorists, for whom the reality of car use does not match the advertising propaganda, is growing hostility to one class of road user who still seems to enjoy something resembling automobility: the cyclist. In recent years there has been a general shift in the perception of cyclists as being at best harmless and at worst irritating, to outright aggression from much of the driving public. A leader column in The Guardian newspaper articulated this shift in perception, in a piece entitled ‘Mr Toad in Lycra: Cyclists are not all wonderful people’ the newspaper charts the transformation of the cyclist from ‘old maids, biking to holy communion through mists of an autumn morning’ and ‘children pedalling diligently to the school gate’ to ‘the helmeted Lycra-clad fanatic who rides wherever he chooses’, ‘hurling abuse at those who impede him’ (Guardian, 2002: 17). The terms ‘Lycra lout’ (Bamber, 2002: 10) and ‘bicycle guerrillas’ have entered the language, and are frequently applied to bicycle couriers in particular. Also in The Guardian, an official from the Royal Automobile Club (RAC), when talking about proposed European legislation on insurance, is quoted:
Many cyclists behave as if there were no legal constraints upon them, ignoring traffic lights, signs, one-way streets and pedestrian crossings, travelling as fast as possible with no lights or bell: they are bicycle guerrillas. (Guardian, 2002: 3)
On the same day in The Sun newspaper, Jeremy Clarkson wrote an article entitled ‘The Lycra Nazis are Taking Over’:
When will people understand that roads are for cars and that there is no danger at all from speeding motorists if walkers and cyclists steer clear? (Clarkson, 2002)
There are also articles being written from a pseudo-sympathetic perspective, but where the onus of irresponsibility still lies firmly with the cyclists. In an article in The Sunday Times Bryan Appleyard paints a picture of a concerned driver who feels that he might kill a cyclist through no fault of his own:
Your chic cyclist about town wears all black and rides a black bike. This makes him difficult to spot in traffic. Clever. He also likes to flaunt the superior mobility of his vehicle. Waiting at one set of lights I saw a cycle courier performing balletic figure eights in the junction in front, one hand on the handlebars and one clamping a phone to his ear. He could not see the lights and would only know they had changed by the cars moving forward. But we could not move forward; he was in the way. Meanwhile, he risked being hit by traffic coming in the other direction. But he did look really cool. For aggressive cycling style is all about courting risk. At most junctions in London you will see a cyclist cruising around the yellow grid, waiting for a chance to get across whether the lights change or not. If they're quick, they might make it, if they're not, they'll die. (Appleyard, 2002: 3)
There is a demonization of the cyclist, as an active agent in the disruption of the normal operation of the urban traffic network. Car drivers are now the victims of ‘louts’ and ‘guerrillas’. In examining the reasons for this scapegoating of sections of the cycling population as irresponsible and dangerous we are being led into a discussion about ‘risk’. Cyclists, so often complained about, are either putting themselves or others at risk, and perhaps the exemplar of these risk-inducing ‘louts’ and ‘guerrillas’ are cycle couriers. In an article in Cycling Plus magazine, the journalist Cass Gilbert acknowledges this perception:
The media's view of couriers, or messengers as they are known, has never been a lofty one. It's encapsulated by the image of a reckless male cyclist, in his twenties, adorned with tattoos, a nose-ring and plenty of attitude to boot. (Gilbert, 2003: 61)
As examples of risk taking or reckless cyclists, bicycle messengers are viewed as extreme producers of the ‘car driver as victim’ sentiment. Through fieldwork and interviews with messengers, however, the idea that car drivers are victims falls away to reveal another set of motivations for complaining about cyclists in general, and cycle messengers in particular.
Incidence of accident and injury in bicycle messengering
When discussing risk and risk-taking in relation to bicycle messengers, it is important to establish levels of exposure to ‘risk’ – time spent on the road – and rates of accident and injury. My research indicates that the distances travelled by bicycle messengers – 45 to 70 miles a day, depending on the city being worked – are far greater than those recreational cyclists and possibly many drivers –people with less than a 25-mile car journey to work, for instance. With most messengers working between 8 and 10 hours a day, it is testament to the skill of messengers that rates of death appear to be so low. The only specific records of messenger fatalities is an internet obituary board set up by the International Federation of Bicycle Messenger Associations and occasional references in local newspapers. As far as I can establish, through these sources and anecdotally, there is about one messenger death every three to four years in the UK, although the rate appears to be much higher in the US. One messenger reported that there was at least one messenger death a year in New York alone, still a remarkably low rate for a population estimated to be 2000 (IFBMA, 2004). The UK death rate is mercifully low in the light of the rates of injury requiring hospital treatment reported by messengers. In the survey I conducted in 2002–3, 27 percent of messengers from the UK and Ireland (n = 96) reported that they had experienced one accident requiring hospital treatment and a further 34 percent reported experiencing two or more accidents that required hospital treatment. In terms of rates of injury the findings in my survey have been broadly reflected in similar research in the United States. In a study of injuries sustained by bicycle messengers in Boston, USA, researchers found that
70% of working couriers have incurred an injury resulting in days away from work and in visits to a health-care professional or hospital (55%). Annual incidence rates were large at 51 injuries resulting in days away from work per 100 bike couriers. The national average is 3 lost-work injuries per 100 workers, with the highest rate at 15 lost-work injuries per 100 workers in the meat packing industry. (Dennerlein and Meeker, 2002)
The types of accident were also very similar, with ‘collisions and avoiding collisions with motor vehicles’, being ‘doored’ and collisions with pedestrians accounting for 66 percent of ‘events leading to injury’ (Dennerlein and Meeker, 2002).
The potential for death or injury appears to be statistically high for cyclists in general, as the road accident research suggests (Department for Transport, n.d. a). For bicycle couriers the statistics make even more startling reading. According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) the rates of non-fatal injury in the general working population is 1.2 percent of workers per annum (HSE, 2002: 56). Although not a directly comparable figure the sample in my survey reported that in an average three-year period 62 percent would end up with at least one injury that would require hospital treatment as a result of an accident at work.
Who then is the victim?
Many hours of cycling through ‘the city’ have led me to question the motivation for complaints about the behaviour of cyclists, and particularly messengers and the idea of the driver as a victim. I noted an incident in my field diary that illustrates this point perfectly. Having picked up a package I set off to deliver it:
I rode at speed along the outside of the three lanes – towards the oncoming traffic –in order to avoid getting car doored [a collision with a car door that opens suddenly as the cyclist is riding past]. When I reached the end of the line of traffic, I swooped down in front of the cars being held at the light and joined the traffic passing in front. I would say that there was a good 20 yards between myself and the taxi coming at me, which then sped up as quickly as it possibly could and attempted to hit me. The driver was fuming. He sat on his horn and then gave chase. He was beeping me all the way along Duke Street, pulling up every now and again with the window down screaming ‘That was a red light’, when he next caught up with me a little further along he was purple and just screaming ‘you fucking wanker!’. The interesting thing about this altercation is that at no point did he refer to ‘safe’ or ‘dangerous’ behaviour, in fact I don't think that his rage had anything to do with safety, more that he finds it genuinely annoying that I don't obey the same rules as him. (Field diary, 27 June 2002)
This opinion that people are more upset that cyclists are breaking the law, rather than a danger to themselves or anybody else is widely held in the courier community. I have had many conversations with riders who feel that they are easy targets for drivers’ general frustration with the urban motor transport infrastructure. This general perception was summed up by a courier in an interview:
Or people get cross if you break the law, people get cross for… like you're breaking the law against them, even though they're not even affected by it… You're just pottering through an open junction and people do get a bit cross. I'm guessing that's because they use the road and they feel that because they're in a car they have to obey the rules but they feel… well I don't know… they feel like you ought to because they have to. (Messenger in Cardiff interview transcript, March 2002)
The general irritation with the state of the urban traffic infrastructure is understandable. I suppose it must be more frustrating for those who bought certain brands of vehicle on the evidence of advertisements depicting motorcars speeding along ‘the open road’ (Sofoulis, 2002) unhindered by obstacles to free movement. This frustration, however, spills over occasionally into acts of violence against perceived impediments. This point was illustrated in an interview with a London Messenger:
… the street I do ten, fifteen times a day, and it's got a chicane before it. You can get up to 30 miles an hour, it's one way and it's a really smooth surface, and it turns into Tottenham Court Road, so you've only got a left-hand turn. And this guy's behind me going RRR RRR [horn noise]. ‘Get out of my fucking way!’, you know, thirty metres from the Give Way. So I'm riding along and I eventually let him past and he overtook me, and he swerved twice and then hit the brake. I just went through his back window. (Messenger in London interview transcript, May 2003)
The idea that it is cyclists who are manufacturers of risk and that motorists are the victims of this manufacturing is a distortion of the proportional danger exacted upon any particular environment by the use of either technology. A cyclist, like any other distraction, may cause a motor vehicle to crash into something else – a wall or another motor vehicle – but a collision with a bike will hardly ever cause bodily harm to a motorist. Department for Transport (DfT) statistics show that in 1998:
Per kilometre travelled, pedal cyclists are 14 times more likely to be killed or seriously injured (KSI) in a road accident than car drivers. (Department for Transport, n.d. a)
It could be that assessing injury and death on a per kilometre basis is distorting an equitable comparison of the risk of death or injury between cyclists and motorists as car journeys tend to be further than those taken by bicycle. The distances travelled in cars, however, may not be as long as one might imagine; the National Transport Survey figures show that 1 in 4 car journeys were less than 2 miles in distance in 2001 (Transport 2000, 2002).
Perceptions of risk
Although the risk of injury, or even death, at work is greater in the bicycle couriering industry, the way in which couriers perceive and cope with ‘risk’ appears to be framed within quite specific understandings of what it means to be in danger or to behave dangerously. For instance, in an interview with a bicycle messenger firm manager in the UK the question of danger arose.
BF: You think there something like inherently dangerous about it? FM: Yeah, I do. I think you need to be very… you need to concentrate and be aware of what's happening all the time and there's not many jobs where you could hurt yourself by being… by drifting off for a bit. You really have to concentrate on the road all the time and you know if you're just sat at the computer, well if you daydream for a few minutes no big deal. If you do that on the bike it could cause problems. So in terms of levels of concentration I think it's an issue. If you're careful you can stop yourself from causing any accidents.
I then suggested that it could well be that the courier's attentiveness may be worthless if an accident is caused by other road users behaving dangerously.
FM: Yes. Ok. It's an issue. Now whether you want to classify that as then a dangerous job. Now we've probably had a dozen actual incidents in the four years but how many… BF: But what would you call an incident? FM: Well when someone's actually been knocked off. A dozen? Maybe more. But certainly not as many as a dozen claims have gone in. But that's… I think you're looking at that more in terms of the sort of job where you're working with machinery or something like that that's incidents will always happen. (Firm manager interview transcript, March 2002)
This is an interesting passage for several reasons. The interviewee, whilst acknowledging that couriering could be a dangerous job, equates it with any other job where a worker uses machinery and needs to concentrate. Although this might be a point, statistically it appears as though bicycle couriering incurs more injuries than any other job scrutinized by the Health and Safety Executive in the UK and the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard in the United States. There are a couple of explanations emerging for the widely held attitude articulated in the above excerpt. One is possibly denial. The managers of many of the firms do not acknowledge that the job is in itself dangerous, preferring to explain that it is the behaviour of the individual riders themselves who are the major factor in accidents. Although it is possible to have a degree of sympathy with this view it is a contested description of the major factors in accidents or injury, and is a view disputed by bicycle messengers themselves. In fact when messengers apportion blame for accidents the vast majority report that they are not at fault. In my survey couriers describe 340 accidents where they felt fault or blame could be apportioned. A total of 10 percent were described by respondents as ‘all my fault’, 22 percent were described as ‘partly my fault’ and 68 percent were described as ‘not my fault’. Even if it is accepted that there is bound to be a reporting bias when it comes to apportioning blame for accidents, there is an obvious discrepancy between this particular manager's view of the risk of injury, as a by product of the activities of the riders who get injured, and the view that the activity itself is inherently dangerous.
Another reason for the interviewee's opinion might be that couriering is not inherently dangerous, and that the couriers are responsible for putting themselves at more risk than is necessary. By working as a bicycle messenger I have come to recognize that some people are comfortable with riding in a fashion that I might describe as ‘risky’. I recorded in my field diary an example of the differences between people's riding styles and the differences in people's perceptions of risk:
The day started quite strangely; when I left the house Alan ‘Tiny’ [another courier] was just along the road. I came up next to him at some traffic lights and said hello. After we had established that we were both working, the lights changed and he shot off. I'm not sure he was cycling like this before we met but I decided to tail him. We went from between 17 and 25 mph through the centre of the city. I never stop for red lights unless I think I will definitely get knocked off, but I do slow down! We flew through all of the lights and were just getting hooted by everything in sight. It was another reminder that I could be in a position of ignorance, because I simply do not have to ride like that. After he went across the enormous junction at the bottom of St Mary St I decided to let him go. He went a different way to me and was in the office when I arrived. I felt quite odd about the incident. I wondered whether he had been showing off, or needed to show me what type of a rider he is – hardcore courier – or whether he actually rides like that normally. I felt a bit wet for not riding quite so dangerously. (Field diary, 20 June 2002)
From this excerpt it might be reasonable to assume that some riders might be more likely to be involved in accidents than others, but another excerpt from the field diary illustrates the random distribution of dangerous situations.
I was coming though a big roundabout with entrances onto it from a flyover, and I was going at a fair pace, when I noticed that a cement lorry wasn't slowing coming onto the road. I really stepped on as hard as I physically could and went across the front of the lorry, which just didn't stop. I reckon it missed me by half a metre. (Field diary, 9 May 2002)
There was another occasion on a dual carriageway when a car overtook me, stopped metres ahead and the passenger side door flew open. I rode straight into it, buckled my wheel and was thrown onto the pavement.
I would argue that the perception that accidents, and subsequent injuries, are the result of particular types of risk taking behaviour could, in part, be an element of a general mythologization of bicycle messengers. There are undoubtedly differences in the ways in which messengers ride and, when discussing ‘risk’, this will need to be borne in mind. The reporting by the workers themselves, however, and my own participation, reveal that having an accident is much more dependent on an array of circumstances rather than on the behaviour of couriers alone.
Symbolic compensation: collusion in image maintenance in a dangerous, poorly paid job
There are two major discourses in popular perceptions of bicycle messengers, and both serve to maintain an identity that is utilized and often enhanced by the messengers themselves. The first is derision and outright hostility and the second is a romanticized admiration. Both of these images are directly related to the subversion of the ‘normalized’ world of the motor-car by messengers –the role of danger, risk and law breaking are challenges to urban regulation. On the surface, the degree of mobility, freedom and autonomy exercised and celebrated by the messenger community might be perceived as true ‘automobility’. The machine is powered by the individual, the barriers to spatial access are regulated only by the width of the bike, the temporal freedom is absolute – you can ride whenever you want, and if you are no respecter of the ancient and anachronistic laws of trespass, you can ride pretty much wherever you want. The subversive elements of law-breaking and risk are liberating to the extent that the impact of such behaviours are slight and individualized, whereas the ramifications of law-breaking and risk taking in a motor-car are likely to involve injury to others than the driver alone.
The idea of a romantic projection is something that begins to define bicycle messengers as something different from cyclists generally. Much of the commentary concerning bicycle messengers has a very strong romantic theme, and this romance is very much part of the ‘culture’ of couriering. The riders themselves engage in narratives of reflexive romanticization. Even when attempting to explain away the romance, many cannot avoid intensifying the preconceptions that the general population might have about the work itself and the people that do it. Bob McGlynn, a veteran New York messenger, provides an example:
I remember once asking at a meeting of 50 bike messengers, ‘has anyone here not had an accident?’ No one raised their hands. Such is the reality of bicycle messengering beneath the human interest stories which romanticize ‘those nonconformist free spirits, going for the big bucks’; and/or condemning us for murderous wild riding, ‘law breaking,’ ‘bad attitudes… mental retardation,’ etc. I find that many peoples’ overcuriosity about bike messengers borders on the neurotic. ‘You do that!?… Wow…’ or (jealously) ‘Well you've got some freedom but you can't do it all your life you know.’ Perhaps they want/need a little of that ‘free spirit’ stuff: the relative frontier of the open street vis-à-vis [sic] the unnatural enclosedness of 9-to-5-land can be quite intriguing with its danger and autonomy. (McGlynn, 1985)
By documenting the harsh ‘reality’ of the life of a courier – the amount of accidents that occur in courier work – McGlynn claims to be exposing the ‘reality’ of the situation beneath the romantic image. It could be argued, however, that he is actually contributing to that image by presenting an occupation populated by people who expose themselves to high levels of risk every day. This simple story of the meeting conjures up images of bravery, bravado and dedication. When he suggests that maybe people need to believe the ‘free spirit’ myth, there is the suspicion that he also needs to believe it. In an interview with an older messenger the bravura romance is once again articulated:
MC1: You know if two cars pass very close, well it's rare that you haven't got 18 inches for you to fit into it, and if you can put yourself into that 18 inches even something pretty dodgy looking, you know, like turning into two lanes of oncoming traffic and going down the middle. It looks and sounds ridiculous, but you know the two cars are coming to you with plenty of room. Room for two of you to go through it, so you can always do it. BF: But isn't there always the chance that someone will swap lanes? MC1: Well… there is but… there's usually a gap and if you take one lane of traffic at a time there's always a bit where you can make yourself narrow and avoid being hit. (Messenger in Cardiff interview transcript, March 2002)
On the surface this extract appears to have little to do with the maintenance of a romantic image, but there are strong messages being transmitted by the description of riding. By explaining that there is nothing inherently dangerous about riding between two lanes of oncoming traffic, this behaviour is in some sense being both normalized and glamorized. It is normalized because, for this particular courier, if you are aware of the risks and understand traffic there is no reason to think that this is abnormally dangerous behaviour, and it is glamorized because the way in which the courier presents us with behaviour most of us would think of as recklessly dangerous is with a confidence which emphasizes the difference between a courier's idea of what constitutes ‘risk’ and anybody else's idea of what constitutes ‘risk’. These elements of identity management contribute to an overall perception of bicycle messengers, which undoubtedly maintains a romantic, reckless ‘outlaw’ image.
The Atlantic magazine in the United States ran an article entitled ‘Alleycat Couriers: Bicycle messengers, daredevil scofflaws every day, are holding tournaments to see who can get through tough traffic fastest’ where the aura surrounding the industry and those who work in it was succinctly expressed.
Bicycle messengers have existed for a hundred years in San Francisco and New York. They became cults of cool in the 1980s, when the number of messengers in New York reached a peak of around 5,000. E-mail and fax machines have attenuated their ranks (there are currently 1,000 to 2,000 New York messengers), but this has only added to the mystique. In an age when information travels around the world in a millisecond, these urban warriors still zip through the city on their own legpower to deliver legal documents, plane tickets, and other nondigital valuables. (Fisher, 1997)
During the working day, in the brief exchanges you might have with people working in offices, in studios or on industrial estates, there are often expressions of admiration, jealousy and, most frequently, curiosity about what the work entails and who does it. The danger associated with the work, the levels of physical fitness required to ride 60 to 70 miles a day and the weather make it easy to understand why there is a kind of edge to the job that is easy to romanticize. There is a style, where affectations are adopted in order to mark yourself out on the road. Couriers tend to wear either very obvious practical cycling gear –with all of the paraphernalia required for couriering, making the worker distinct from other serious cyclists – or they will wear skate fashion – t-shirts, baggies and shades. It could be argued that these are just practical cycle wear, but in all of the interviews that I have conducted with riders, they have mentioned that the aura and the look of bicycle couriers was a contributing factor in attracting them to the industry – second to the need for a job, of course. The maintenance of this image serves to perpetuate the stereotype positively interpreted within messengering and often negatively interpreted outside of couriering. The maintenance of this image operates as an integral part of a cultural autonomy celebrated as messenger sub-culture.
Conclusions
There is a general perception that the roads are dangerous places to be if you are not in a car. The inhospitable landscape is accentuated by the expectation that the driving public will not be mindful to the safety requirements of non-drivers. The extensive reach of the consumption of car culture impacts on the ecological and social environment to devastating effect (Cubitt, 2001: 62). But the same reach makes it difficult to isolate the motorcar from considerations of social need. The discourse of the ‘need’ to drive is mobilized, creating the right to speed and consequently pollute as almost untouchable. The irony is, of course, that in the urban environment the access to speed is minimal, leaving only the right to pollute. The ideas of isolation from the outside world and abstraction from ‘the weather and other people’ are particularly important for developing a phenomenological understanding of the processes that permit us to make allowances for the increased use of a potentially destructive technology, and the preconceptions we have of our place in the world of the motorcar.
Merleau-Ponty points out that it ‘is never our objective body that we move, but our phenomenal body’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1964: 121). The driver creates a personalized, private, exclusive environment in the ‘non-space’ of their motorcars. It is from the inside of the car that the world is experienced as either a transitory blur or an endless queue of other people's exclusive personalized spaces. Urry highlights the privatized space as an insulating shell:
Protected by seatbelts, airbags, ‘crumple zones’, ‘roll bars’ and ‘bull bars’, car-dwellers boost their own safety while leaving others to fend for themselves in a ‘nasty, brutish and short’ world of millions moving and crashing iron cages. As Adorno wrote as early as 1942: ‘And which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of the engine, to wipe out the vermin of the streets, pedestrians, children and cyclists?’ (Urry, in this volume: p. 23)
This sense of dislocation that drivers have from the outside world fuels the worries of potential cyclists that their safety is not a priority for those who could most easily kill them. The number of cyclists killed on the roads has been declining since 1959. In 1985, 286 deaths were recorded, by 1996 that figure had fallen to 203 – in 2003 there were 114 deaths of cyclists (Department for Transport, n.d. b). This figure, however, needs to be set against the dramatic decline in cycle use over the years in the UK. In the same period the number of journeys made by bicycle fell by 36 percent, from 25 journeys per person per year in 1985/86 to 16 in 1996/97 (Sheffield Cycling Campaign, 2002). This is an analysis supported by Mayer Hillman:
What is overlooked is that the level of casualties is only a partial measure of road safety, particularly where cyclists and pedestrians are concerned. A fall in their number can so obviously be explained by the greater danger from the rising volume and speed of traffic leading to fewer journeys being made by the non-motorized modes. (Hillman, 2000: 2–3)
The decline in the use of the bicycle in the urban environment has led to an increased marginalization of the activity as being reserved for the foolhardy and the reckless – the popular representation of the bicycle messenger.
The dangers are such that when cycling is a need – in the case of couriers an economic need – people do take to their bikes. The manner in which messengers ride, as has been illustrated, is popularly represented as irresponsible, dangerous or risky. I would argue, as would most couriers, that the way to ride swiftly and safely in dense urban traffic is with a degree of assertiveness, and maybe even aggression. My experiences as a messenger have shown that a certain amount of law-breaking and subversion of the ‘normal’ flow of motor traffic is essential for self-preservation. Examples of this are riding on the outside of traffic, often on the side of oncoming traffic, to avoid being ‘doored’, or making sure that, if you are not through red lights, that you are well ahead of the traffic about to go with the green simply so that they can see you. These sorts of behaviours are seen as aggressive but they are actually good practice. The organization of urban traffic, and the behaviour of many drivers, means that if people do take to their bicycles out of need they do so with a stark choice as to how best to ride. Either stick to the kerb and hope that nobody hits you, or assert yourself as a legitimate road user who will not be bullied.
What is therefore entailed in these arguments and developments is a challenge to the dominance of the motorcar as the provider of autonomy. It makes apparent that the car is auto-mobile, it needs a driver, and that the driver is automobile, as the car cannot deliver automobility. The beneficial effects of cycling are obvious in terms of physical health, environmental impact and a sense of ‘being-in-the-world’.
Bicycles let people move with greater speed without taking up significant amounts of scarce space, energy or time. They can spend fewer hours on each mile and still travel more miles in a year. They can get the benefit of technological breakthroughs without putting undue claims on the schedules, energy or space of others. They become masters of their own movements without blocking those of their fellows. Their new tool creates only those demands which it can also satisfy. Every increase in motorized speed creates new demands on space and time. The use of the bicycle is self limiting. It allows people to create a new relationship between their life-space and their lifetime, between their territory and the pulse of their being, without destroying their inherited balance. The advantages of modern self-powered traffic is obvious, and ignored. That better traffic runs faster is asserted, but never proved. Before they ask people to pay for it, those who propose acceleration should try to display the evidence for their claim. (Illich, 1974: 74–5)
The tyranny of the motor-car is that there is an expectation that you should be prepared to drive, whether you like it or not. A frequent cry from drivers, when asked if they would give up their car, is that they would but they ‘have to have it for work’. There is no choice, just a compulsion. All but one of the positive attributes that people ascribe to the motorcar in relation to autonomy and freedom are realized by the bicycle, the exception being that they sometimes don't go as fast, and therefore as far, in the same amount of time. Having said that, the average speed of traffic in London is 11 miles per hour (Greater London Authority, 2003), making it considerably quicker to cycle around the capital than drive. This chapter has shown that there are indeed other ‘roads to freedom’ than the motor car.
At the same time, what looking at cycle couriers (and arguably at cyclists more generally) suggests is not a project to end ‘automobility’ but rather the reverse, an attempt to reconstitute the principal object or technology through which it is to be understood. Hence, the instinctive reaction is to assert that the benefits of bicycle use are obvious for achieving the very things – mobility and autonomy – promised and undelivered by that most destructive of historical anachronisms, the motor-car.
But this entails both a reconstitution of how people see themselves as ‘autonomously mobile’, and a relationship between this ‘new automobility’ and the pre-existing complex centred on the car. One of the principal outcomes of this is the construction of the autonomy of the cycle courier precisely around the daily dangers they experience and the constant law-breaking, which is both rendered ‘necessary’ to their daily work and is the site at which they differentiate themselves from car drivers – the moment at which their autonomy is asserted as their ‘right’ to break traffic rules. In other words, while many of the concrete benefits of cycling are of course very real, the attempt to reconstitute automobility in terms of cycling creates its own contradictions.