Rage Against the Whatever: Angry Cyclist Videos

Type in the search term "cyclist" on YouTube and the autofill function will immediately give you "cyclist road rage." Click "Enter" and you'll see nearly 300,000 results of videos of cyclists and motorists yelling, gesturing, threatening and sometimes even going to blows in the middle of the street.

The steady progression of technology, including ANT+, Bluetooth and memory cards give us the ability to store and carry large amounts of data; the Internet allows us to share what we've captured with our portable cameras and smartphones.

Stir all this up with the advent of social media and you have a potent concoction.

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Angry People

On one end of things, we have websites like Upworthy and TED that try to promote unique ideas—sometimes about cycling—in the interest of provoking thought and discussion. On the other end, we have TMZ and The Chive, which tend to focus more on the provocative and less on the thoughtful.

Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are somewhere in between. They're generally crowd controlled free-for-alls. No one is editing or filtering the content. It's all getting posted, raw and uncensored.

In effect, they constitute public spaces where we can do whatever we want. Which means the content we post somehow represents what it is we want to do. And the popularity of certain videos suggests that we want to do is be angry.

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Where's the Love?

Type in "happy cyclists" on YouTube. You only get about 25,000 results.

"Angry cyclist" and "stupid cyclist" get about 55,000 results apiece. "Angry driver" gets 367,000. "Stupid driver" gets even more, but "polite driver" only gets about 16,000.

While this is an unscientific exploration, the results suggest that we're less likely to share people being nice than people being rude, offensive or unjust. And that makes sense. We don't make a big deal of people treating us nicely because it's expected. We only make a fuss when something changes from our expectations.

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The Effect of Negative Messages

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America suggests we're more likely to complain about the ills of the world on the Internet.

When we are personally offended or attacked by a motorist, posting the video can give us a sense of control over an event that may have been frightening. We feel a certain sense of justice or revenge by outing the bad actor. We feel vindication by the comments others post supporting us. This is an essential act in the human experience.

Sharing the Anger

Our feelings of injustice don't just fade away. As the study suggests, we're compelled to spread the message to other people.

Just like you can share the love, you can share the anger. This can unify people around a cause against injustice or raise awareness of social issues. Unification can be achieved without social media and viral videos.

For instance, cycling advocacy groups in cities such as Portland, Seattle, Chicago and New York have been effective agents of change.

So what are all these videos on YouTube accomplishing? Are they serving any of the aforementioned ends?

Perhaps. They certainly make it hard to ignore the fact that confrontations between cyclists and motorists exist. They may inspire people to get involved in advocacy groups and take action. But the nature of those groups and their actions may be wrongfully influenced by the video content.

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We tend to accept only the content we agree with, and avoid watching or hearing ideas that challenge our views.

YouTube viewers on both sides of the debate reinforce their perception that the other party is the one in the wrong. We reject the notion that we are part of the problem, and in doing so deny taking a critical first step in finding the solution.

And once it's on the Internet, it's there forever.

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Widening the Rift Between Cyclists and Motorists

Over a long enough period of time, do these videos serve a purpose beyond inciting anger? Are they documenting patterns of behavior or metropolitan routing in a way that can help us mitigate these confrontations?

They don't appear to. Neither do many of the comments posted beneath them.

You don't have to search long before someone declares that cyclists shouldn't be on the road or the driver in the video should've been killed. That's neither reasonable nor constructive.

If it accomplishes anything, it only widens the rift between cyclists and motorists. It will hurt efforts in the future if people are still motivated to post angry comments on videos of confrontations that are decades old by the time they see them.

If you're angry about it when it happens, and people are angry about it when they see it forever after, then the only thing the video accomplished was it propagated anger.

Man is a social animal as much as a technological one. We might use technology as a social vehicle, but we continue to socialize according to old norms.

We see people fighting in a video and immediately pick sides based on who we identify with instead of their individual behavior. We need to be as innovative in constructing social systems as we are to technological ones.

Perhaps it's time to inject a degree of thoughtfulness into the dialogue. Without real thought, our anger has no real direction. There's no potential to use it as a force for good. The circumstances remain unchanged and continue to breed more anger.

If the cycling community is going to share unfortunate experiences like this, it should be used in conjunction with constructive efforts such as awareness and educational campaigns or policy changes that help make roads safer for cyclists and drivers.

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