Dostoyevsky said you can judge a society by the way it treats its prisoners. I say you can tell the same thing by watching the way it drives.
Currently, my favorite place to watch new cracks spider through the foundation of Western Civilization is the stretch of St. Petersburg’s First Avenue N. between 16th and 34th streets. First Avenue is one-way running west. After it crosses 16th, its right lane disappears, replaced by a 4-foot-wide bike lane and 6 or 8 feet of asphalt shoulder clearly and alternately marked as parking and right-turn-only lane.
And either nobody notices, or nobody cares.
I drive this stretch every time I get the chance, and my cynicism is never disappointed. I’ve never seen an accident along those 18 blocks, which is probably a big part of the problem; we tend to nurture our individual little driving malfeasances unconsciously until something big happens, after which we pay close attention for a few days. Then, I don’t know, our minds are clouded by an especially fabulous episode of The O.C. or something, and the bad habits reappear.
I rarely see cyclists using the bike lane; there are usually a few along the thoroughfare, but they generally stick to the sidewalk, where a motorist would have to be trying really, really hard to hit ’em. It’s another factor adding to the gauntlet’s potential for a newsworthy accident: When drivers don’t regularly see bikers using the right lane, they begin to assume there won’t ever be any.
Today, I drive down First three times between 5 and 6 p.m.
On my first trip through, one of those vans used to chauffeur the elderly and/or wheelchair-bound trundles slowly through the parking spaces and bike lane, turn signal on, for three or four blocks. Eventually, the driver finds the street he’s looking for, feinting left into a crowded real lane in order to make the wide right turn.
On my second trip, there’s actually a cyclist using the bike lane. Unfortunately, he is seriously inconveniencing whoever’s in the primered old-school Toyota Celica three cars behind me. The vehicle has swerved right into the nonexistent lane to surge past a couple of cars, but now it has to slow to a crawl and wait for another opening in its former lane because the damn biker’s in its way.
On my third trip through, I’m a bit nonplussed to find everyone driving civilly, until I enter the right-turn-only lane where it develops just short of 34th Street. I unintentionally cut off an old, black Ford Bronco careening up through the parking spaces and bike lane to get to the right turn. When I pause at the red light before making my turn, the Bronco’s driver lays on his horn and relays the universal both-hands-up “what the fuck are you waiting for, shithead?” gesture to my rearview mirror.
I turn and turn again into a large lot bordering directly on First Avenue, park, and wonder when and where the next bad accident will once again focus the public’s attention momentarily on their own driving habits.
On July 6, Joseph Pastore, a gentleman of questionable vehicular talent, plowed into a plethora of bicyclists. Not invisible bicyclists, either, but regular ones, a bunch of ’em, wearing those tight future-people uniforms and riding incredibly ostentatious bikes. Some say that, were the gentleman blind, he still should have been able to feel the colors.
The media and those susceptible to its wiles went apeshit for, oh, 15 minutes or so, as they are wont to do. Some called for sweeping reform of whatever Florida law it is that allows 80-year-old residents with cataracts in both eyes to legally retain their licenses (and big, big vehicles), overlooking the fact that seniors are, by and large, the only Floridians who can be counted on to vote en masse. Others designated the incident as evidence of the obvious disregard on the part of motorists for their mild-mannered, health-conscious counterparts, overlooking the fact that some cyclists ride with the kind of sociopathic carelessness generally reserved for action-movie heroes and the most resilient of cartoon characters.
But what everybody did was remember the last time they nearly hit somebody on a bike. Or got their eyes back on the road and had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of them, or the curb, or somebody’s damn dog. Or had somebody tailgating them hard, flashing the lights and giving them the finger while passing, even though they were doing, like, 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. Because we all do stupid stuff on the road — from the other guy’s perspective. Each of us does things every day that, in the eyes of everybody else, only an incompetent jackass would do. And then while they marvel at our idiocy, they drift into the next lane over and nearly shear off the left front fender of some other idiot.
I almost hit a guy riding a bicycle a couple of years ago. Sure, he was wearing all black and riding a bike with no reflectors down tree-lined, poorly lit 10th Street N. at midnight — obviously on his way to a meeting of the Old Northeast chapter of Insomniac Ninja Bikers for Common Sense. But I was changing the radio station, wiping chili from a 7-Eleven Quarter Pound Big Bite off my shirt, and flicking cigarette ash through an inadequately cracked driver-side window.
He braked as hard as I did, and went down. It was so close, I thought I had at least pinned his front wheel under my left front tire. No actual contact occurred, though, and I idled forward as he righted his bike and turned his pale face (the only light-reflecting surface on the guy) up to me.
“Asshole!” he screamed, before pedaling off to buy some camouflage skin paint, or perhaps a profile-slimming black ski mask.
For my part, I decided to become infinitely more vigilant, a bastion of tidy responsible driving habits. Then I completely forgot about the incident until reading about Mr. Pastore’s accident in the Times, after which I began to notice the disconnected, habitually careless maneuvers of motorists everywhere. But, for some reason, especially on First Avenue N.
Where I sit, watching car after car use the bike path like a freeway breakdown lane during gridlock, until the massive thunderhead billowing darkly across the bay entices me to head out. (My personal favorite was the guy in the expensive gold hatchback/SUV hybrid who got in the turn lane down at 31st, realized it wasn’t 34th, and just tore ass through the light and all the way up to me, basically grinding his tires against the curb the whole way.)
I start my truck, marveling at the human condition, and promptly back over a curbed parking-lot divider, nearly reverse-ramming an auto-parts service van some thoughtless cretin had the nerve to park behind me.
Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or by e-mail at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Sep 11-17, 2003.
