Cyclists are invisible to American drivers

14th September, 2011

America is built for cars. People's houses are very spread out. Shops in towns are very spread out (so they can have car parks for each place. Drive-throughs are very popular. They even have drive-through banks. People drive automatics so they can do more in their cars, such as eat a meal, chat on the phone, change the radio station every 5 mins etc. I think it probably stems from the fact that there was so much land when settlers came here so people claimed a lot of land for themselves and so had a land buffer between them and their neighbours. In many European countries, people lived in towns (often around a religious community).

Anyway, it means that people don't cycle or walk anywhere. They only exercise for recreation (not to go somewhere). I think this is kind of unnatural. For me, if something is within walking distance, it makes sense to walk there. Here people might drive 1/4 mile and then do an intensive run later.

It seems that only immigrants cycle or walk places. My aunt said that her sister (my other aunt) was walking for about 5 minutes down the road and she got a lot of stares. People thought there was something wrong when a well-dressed white person walked down the road (maybe her car broke down). After hearing this story, I realise why I got so many stares when I was carrying my three bags down the street for 40 mins at 5am in a poor Minneapolis neighbourhood. Public transportation is also not very good because not many people use it. Although the transport in cities is not too bad. Inter-city transport is terrible (or non-existent).

Since I don't have a car here, I have joined the other (mostly Latin American) immigrants by cycling everywhere. The roads are actually not too bad for cycling. Because the roads are so good, they all have hard shoulders, which are convenient for cyclists. When you come to a junction, however, the hard shoulder disappears for a while and you are in no man's land. If I obey the regular rules, it would be very dangerous as there is not much room in the car lanes and they go quite fast. If I go in the right lane, when going straight, I get beeped at. In towns, cars are parked on what I would use as a cycle lane. I often just cycle on the footpath because it is safer than risk cars coming too close to me or running into parked car doors opening.

Cyclists seem to be invisible to drivers here. They come way too close to you and if they are turning, they won't wait for you to pass (even though you might have the right of way). Today, I was amazed when as I was cycling on a road, a driver just turned into an entrance I was passing. I had to pull on the brakes and she didn't even acknowledge that I was there. So many cars have overtaken me just before they were turning right so would immediately go in front of me (where again if I didn't stop, they would hit me). I miss the cycling in Amsterdam.