One Street News

May-June 2013

Vol. 6, Issue 4

1. One Street at Velo-city
2. Resources – The New Majority: Pedaling Towards Equity
3. Hot Topics – Does Seeking Safety Endanger Us?

One Street at Velo-city

By: Sue Knaup, Executive Director

I spent June in Europe connecting with colleagues and friends in seven countries. At the center of the trip was the Velo-city conference, which drew 1,400 participants from all over the world to discuss the latest ways to improve conditions for bicycling. It was one of the best of the seven Velo-city conferences I have attended, injecting fun and interaction at every chance over the four days. The speakers were exceptional. A few noteworthy included a plenary speaker mom who had gained fame for defending the right of parents to let their children roam free in our safety-zealous society and a session highlighting bicycles in art and film.

Five One Street board members attended the conference helping us connect with longtime and new partners. I was honored to have the chance to represent One Street through two presentations at the conference. The first was an interactive workshop designed to improve the discussion on bicycle helmets. There were six of us as brief presenters to inspire attendees to consider the complexity of the issue and avoid jumping to emotional conclusions about bicycle helmets. Then we split attendees into smaller groups to try discussing a particular topic (“What are the actual results of helmet promotions?”) and come up with three priority points to report to the whole group. The points were interesting, covering aspects that should always be brought into such discussions. But even more interesting was our full group discussion that followed, revealing lessons learned in avoiding heated emotions in order to find common ground. We hope attendees will spread these ideas back in the communities where they live and work.

Later in the conference I led a roundtable discussion on our new book, Defying Poverty with Bicycles and ways attendees could launch their own Social Bike Business program. The roundtables lasted 90 minutes with a change of tables halfway, but most of the first group stayed as others joined in the lively discussion. I’m looking forward to continuing the discussion directly with these leaders of programs in several countries in Europe and South America.

The Velo-city website will soon have session presentations posted. I recommend a look through as you are sure to find something inspiring no matter which methods you use to improve cycling for your particular community. And to hear more stories about my trip contact me directly or check Facebook for some fun photos soon.

Resources – The New Majority: Pedaling Towards Equity

A new report by the League of American Bicyclists and the Sierra Club does a nice job of showing that old generalizations about bicyclists are no longer appropriate. Take a look at The New Majority: Pedaling Towards Equity.

Hot Topics – Does Seeking Safety Endanger Us?

By: Sue Knaup, Executive Director

Today is the 4th of July, a day to celebrate the courage and vision of America’s founders. I’ve been pondering the problem and illusion of “safety” lately and I suppose this day is a good one to take a first stab at articulating those thoughts. This puzzle began at Velo-city, perhaps in the helmet workshop I described above. Perhaps it even began prior to Velo-city in Bratislava at ECF’s AGM where I realized that current efforts to prevent overzealous helmet campaigns from undermining bicycle advocacy are no longer sufficient. There’s no life in them. They repel rather than attract followers.

So I asked myself why I am still so passionate about attacking this threat that tramples any effort to increase bicycling. There’s something more to it that makes my blood boil. In the plenary session at Velo-city where the mom described being molested by other parents for letting her nine-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone, I felt that same surge of anger. It’s what prompted the buttons that read: “Ask me why I cycle without a helmet.” Helmetless cyclists are constantly molested by people asking where their helmet is.

It’s not these unwelcomed intrusions, but something even deeper that riles me; something about safety or the idea of safety that sets me off. A week after the conference, I bicycled through a small town called Terezin in the Czech Republic next to the Elbe River where Jews and others had been imprisoned before being sent to the death camps. As I rode through the ghetto, my breath caught and tears flowed, not so much for those who had died, but for those who had chosen to do nothing to save them...in the name of safety. Safety for themselves and their loved ones. This puzzle I’d been working on had grown way past helmets.

A few days later, I was riding up a forested canyon at the town of Bad Schandau, also along the Elbe River, where the spring floods had destroyed most of the businesses and many houses in town. As I rode up the canyon where a lovely stream flowed next to the road, I could see where the stream had been straightened and that is where the banks had flooded the worst. We straighten streams and widen roads in the name of safety, only to find that these actions cause far more deaths than if we had left them alone. A new slogan came to mind as I rode along this stream: “F#%k Safety!” Yeah, it likely wouldn’t play too well with most audiences.

We give up our courage for safety. Would America have broken free from the British if our founders were as obsessed with safety as we are? We trade in our freedom to risk, for safety. We’ve even given up our most basic human right for safety—the right to innocence until proven guilty. At every airport all over the world we readily allow ourselves to be considered criminals until strangers and machines prove us otherwise, all for safety. With each of these small steps we leave behind another piece of our humanity.

As I rode the river path into Dresden, a light rain falling, a new thought came to me: Terror wins when we choose safety. It won during the Holocaust. It has won at every airport. And it wins every time someone is scared into wearing a bicycle helmet (or, more likely, scared away from cycling). Safety, then, enables terror. So, are we endangering ourselves when we seek safety? Those who turned away from the Holocaust could claim they were indeed safe. No one is ever harmed by emptying their pockets and succumbing to a human or machine that sees or feels more than they’d ever let a stranger see or feel outside of an airport. And yes, I’ve heard time and again over the last ten years I’ve worked against overzealous bicycle helmet promotions that helmets are easy to wear and don’t hurt anyone. But I know that each of those last three statements is false. There is harm every time we give up our courage, our adventurous spirit, our dignity and human rights, even for this something we call safety. It’s difficult to identify the harm when looking only at individuals. Instead we must look at our entire society and how we have changed in just a few hundred years.

And what is safety anyway? There is no such thing. We can choose to avoid danger such as choosing to bicycle on a quiet street instead of a highway that goes to the same place. We can reduce danger by narrowing roads and returning streams to their natural state. But these are different from putting on a helmet and believing we are now safe or worse, molesting and scaring someone else into wearing a bicycle helmet because we believe it will keep them safe. There’s also a grave difference when we turn away from a terrible wrong in order to keep ourselves safe.

This puzzle is nowhere near finished, but some pieces are starting to fall into place. I need help with this bugger! If you are interested in brainstorming next steps for attacking this allusive beast, especially from the perspective of bicycle helmets, please email me at: sue{at}onestreet.org. It’s bound to be an adventure, rife with risk and peril. It will take courage and passion to create something that will overcome this safety spell that has taken hold of our society. And I can guarantee that there will be no guarantee of safety. Are you in? Let me know.