A month ago I biked up the hill to my exercise class, as I do every week. I bike to work, into town for nights out and shopping and meetings, across town to see friends. Cycling has been my primary form of transport since I was 10, through my teens in Manchester and adult life in cities around Britain and mainland Europe. I’ve sometimes also had a car, for weekend adventures, so I know the driver’s view, but mostly I navigate on two wheels.
That day, the uphill bike ride through south Co Dublin was bizarrely easy. Drivers turning left hung back to let me go instead of accelerating to pass and then cutting me off. No one squeezed past me at the roundabout. And when I reached the gym, there was hushed, sorrowful talk and I understood why the drivers along that particular road were suddenly so caring. A young woman had lost her life earlier that day.
You’re so brave, people say, to cycle in Dublin, I’d never do that, isn’t it terribly dangerous? The answer is no, there’s nothing very dangerous about riding a bike, not once you’ve learned to balance and steer. The danger is in the interaction of drivers and cyclists, almost exclusively to the disadvantage and sometimes to the death of the cyclist.
Most of my near-misses are because drivers “didn’t see you there”, but though I am small I am not invisible, not in my hi-vis and lights. They are not looking, or maybe they saw “a bike” but not the human being like them in a human body like theirs, riding it. Drivers’ moments of inattention, little spurts of malice or aggression behind the wheel, mean that my kids might not have a mother at bedtime. If you’re going to drive a car, you have to see people.
I’m a Brexit-era ‘citizen of nowhere’, trying to settle in Ireland
I was taught to avoid the ‘trap’ of cooking but I take pleasure in domestic life
I had my kids in my mid-20s, which was unheard of among women of my class and generation
Men are deemed more masculine for taking up more space, women more feminine for taking up less
This is about power, about who counts, who is visible, whose lives matter. It’s exhausting work for all of us, recognising the full and equal existence of every person, remembering that every body holds love and fear and hope just like ours, but when we have power it is necessary work, and most of us are never so powerful as at the wheel. All a driver has to do is not check the left-hand mirror before pulling in, not remember that I might need to swerve around a pothole as the car passes, and I will die.
Some drivers seem to enjoy causing fear, but I hope most are just insulated behind airbags and crumple zones and have no idea what it’s like for other people trying to reach the other side of the junction intact. I wish urban cycling could be part of the driving test.
There are nearby countries – not, mostly, Britain – with similar climates and populations where it is not “brave” to bike, where cyclists are not adjured to wear more and more hi-vis and flashing lights and whatever it takes to try to make drivers see that there are human beings in fragile human bodies beside their steel boxes, countries where kids bike to primary school and grandparents bike around town without helmets.
Many Dublin cyclists are couriers, risking their lives for low pay to bring dinner to people who don’t feel like going out, and unsurprisingly they tend to take most risks because their livelihood depends on moving as fast as possible. Taxi drivers, who share the bus and bike lanes and are also paid to hurry, are the most aggressive, in my experience.
Other cyclists include kids too young to drive, students saving money, anyone who is able to choose air and exercise over slow and stuffy buses. In Dublin, many of us are probably not particularly vulnerable once we get off our bikes, but when we cycle we expose ourselves to the literal and metaphorical climate of this place, and the climate of dangerous driving is far more worrying than the weather.
I bike because I like the activity, freedom and speed, but more importantly because I want there to be clean air for everyone’s grandchildren and, for all of us now, a world in which every body on the street is visible and valuable.