Car-head? You be the judge.
I think we have car-head again in this newspaper article about a bicycling advocate from North Carolina who was rear-ended last week by a text-messaging motorist. He was seriously injured and faces a long recuperation.
According to the article,
Mark Schulz, an epidemiologist in the School of Health and Human Performance, suffered injuries including a shattered kneecap, crushed vertebrae, broken ribs, a broken sternum and a concussion.He faces lengthy rehabilitation.
Note that you have to get to paragraph 8 before you learn about the text-messaging–up till then the motorist is just called “inattentive.”
Consider also the general message of this article, which is that, by golly, sometimes a bicyclist who is doing everything right still gets creamed by a motorist. It almost seems to legitimize the accepted opinion that these incidents are nearly always the cyclists’ fault.
And note that the city’s bicycle coordinater told the reporter that “bicycle-car accidents are a two-way street and no few stem from bike riders not obeying the rules of the road.” How is that relevant in an article about a man who was hit from behind even though he had front and rear lights, reflective gear, and a helmet? If a drunk driver hits a cyclist will we still be told that bicyclists tend usually to be the ones at fault? How is this different?
Or take a look at how this narrative sequence is written:
The officer said that motorist Amy Dunnuck of Julian was “text messaging on her phone when she looked up and saw a male on a bicycle.”
“She attempted to swerve left to avoid contact with the bicycle but was unsuccessful,” said Kees, who cited Dunnuck for failing to reduce speed.
City officials and bike groups say that many motorists need to get better at sharing the road with bikes and being more alert for their presence.
The first paragraph makes it sound perfectly natural to be text-messaging while driving, and, if anything, the cyclist snuck up on the driver. The second paragraph makes her sound like she was heroic in her attempts not to hit him, but had to take her licks anyway from the police officer, who had no choice but to cite her. The third paragraph minimizes her actions considerably, admonishing drivers to “be more alert” and “get better at sharing the road.” I just think it’s all kind of weird, given the circumstances.
I think if you start to imagine other ways this story could have been written, the bias will jump out at you. Why isn’t this an article imploring people to stop text-messaging while driving rather than an article imploring bicyclists to be more careful–even though that is completely irrelevant to what happened in this case?
–Erik Ryberg
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:15 pm
You are right about the author. I do know what the Greensboro Bike/Ped Coordinator, Ms. Peggy Holland, said was part of a lengthy interview, not all of which was directly related to the story. This article may not have made it into the paper if not for the Bike/Ped Coordinator bringing it to the attention of the reporter. Thanks to her efforts it was front page.
The important fact here is that the driver received a “failure to slow down” ticket for reckless driving.