jt10000 wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
When I drive my car in Canada, France, Germany (most places in europe...England being the notable exception) and the USA, I just assume if I do something stupid like rolling through a stop sign of speed a bit over the speed limit, I'll get the full hammer and no leniancy and I'll get the full "criminal treatment" from the cop and if I do the same on my bike, I assume I'll get zero slack
Fair assumption. And white people tend to get more slack in driving - and the same is true on the bike. It's well documented in driving. If most people of all sorts of backgrounds break the law, but people of a certain races face stricter enforcement, that's racism.We also see it in traffic design - access to safe places. Yeah we can say it's class, not race. But really it's both. Some writing on this:
Chicago
https://www.chicagoreader.com/...Content?oid=52925575 Oakland
https://www.transformca.org/...racism-bike-planning Florida
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/...k-is-a-crime-6393767 NYC
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/...-the-law-they-cited/ Minneapolis
https://www.ourstreetsmpls.org/..._traffic_enforcement But let me give you some examples from me - the first on the bike and the others in car travel to/from races.
I've twice been stopped by police in New York City's Central Park by police for riding very early - a bit before 5am. Which is "correct" in that the park it technically closed then so I didn't think much of it. Those are the rules. But I was with some riding friends and the topic came up about how early people go to the park and I said "Well, I've been stopped twice before 5 AM." Note - I am *rarely* there at that time. To which a friend who is white said "What? I am there often before 5am and have never been stopped." Hmmm. It might be gender - the person who said this is a woman, but chunky so I'm not sure that's evident. Maybe. Very pale skin.
And a second example - a long time ago I was driving around scouting out the route for a century ride for my cycling club. Driving around this one town that is very white. And you know what - a police officer saw me, starts up his car and starts following me around. I'm driving scrupulously legally, but every turn he follows me. W T F. Chester, Connecticut. Not fun to just be followed like that. You could argue that he could tell from my skin color that I wasn't local, so this is about crime not race, but does he do that when he sees an out of state plate? I don't know....
Another example - I'm coming back from a bike race in my car and I decide to take a break. So I drive into a public parking lot - a park-and-ride lot in Windsor or Windsor Locks Connecticut. Huge empty lot. And a couple minutes later a police car drives across this giant, empty lot and the guy yells "I'd like to know what are you doing!" I'm in a car in a parking lot and that warrants police attention?
Around the same year the same thing happened to a white friend and I in his car. After which he says to "That was weird." No, it's actually not weird for some of us in certain parts of Connecticut.
And another time with the same guy we were stopped three times in the same day for the same issue. And it WAS an issue - one of his lights on his car burned out, but it'd been burned out for several days or a couple weeks he said. But the day I was in the car was the day he was stopped. Repeatedly. And he said "I never get stopped unless you're with me."
I had something like that happen in Shenzhen China on a 5 am run. I had police following me for the entire run, handing off from one police unit to the next to the next to the next. They never stopped me, but they followed the entire run. My wife is Irish Canadian and whenever we drive across the border there seems to be this very long interrogation as if its something that is impossible especially when my son was really young (as if some child abduction was going on....really we're one real family). If we go across the border individually this stuff never came up. We had another scenario when myself and another dark skinned athlete of Malaysian descent were stopped at the border and held for an hour while they searched the car...."really officers, all we have are bikes and triathlon gear".....my list on traffic cops is somewhat endless in terms of how they enforce and the tone of treating us like criminals. I had one scenario at Ironman Lake Placid when I was on one of my few trips to spectate. There were many spectators encroaching on the road, and a cop shouted at me from across the road, ran across and started to give me grief like I did some criminal move, when the road was crowded with white spectators doing exactly the same. It felt weird and one of my good friends, who had just come back from deployment from Afghanistan who was also spectating, and as a front line recent war vet who is not willing to put up with bullshit just jumped in and almost ripped the head of the cop off saying, "Hey I'm on the road too, why are you not picking on me".
That type of stuff, I/we just accept as a price for looking different.
But I never feel like my personal safety is compromised any differently than white cyclist. Will drivers drive with any more or less care around me compared to a white guy, I thought this is the same, Maybe drivers will give white women more space, because of gender, but I thought I get more or less the same traffic treatment from drivers as other male cyclists!