This happened

So, this happened.

Guardian - courier convicted for death of woman

I feel a lot of things about this.  The highest one on the list is fear.  It makes me more scared to be out on my bike, commuting through well used roads through city centres.  It's already quite an uncomfortable experience.

My cycle commute is 16 miles there and 16 miles back.  Like many commuters, I travel into a city centre from somewhere more suburban, or in my case, rural.  Manchester city looks like a spiders web of commuter routes leading into the centre, criss crossing but ultimately the main strands a condensed accumulation of people moving in the same direction. City bound.

There are other ways I can commute.  I can, and do, for example, catch the train a few times a week.  I can, and do drive in maybe four times a year.  That proportion is down to the unpleasantness of the traffic, the cloying, exhaust fume laden, noisy, angry, argumentative feeling drive.  Everyone vying for space, and it feels like nobody is doing this with any kind of cooperative instinct.  It's really stressful.  It also doesn't make sense for the environment, just one person in a vehicle, using fossil fuels in a pretty selfish fashion.  I feel guilty when I do it on occasions when there's something that needs carrying or somewhere to be after work which hasn't proven possible by bicycle or public transport. I feel bad every time, only mildly alleviated by offering a lift to one of my regular travelling companions.  For me, driving = hassle, for sure.

My cycle commute is a route made to bring out the worst in human nature, as far as I can tell, but my choices are incredibly limited as to how I navigate my way along the spider's web into Manchester.  My biggest restrictions are getting across the M60 at Stockport.  The A6 is the only way which doesn't involve a particularly risky roundabout manoeuvre.  One of the roundabouts has the added complication of having an exit devoted to M60 traffic.  It doesn't really feel great on a bike.  For reasons unknown, the footbridge which did go across the M60 through a park just to the side of the A6 has been shut for quite some time, and there is no diversion, other than a sign suggesting to walkers they go via the A6.  All because of this crunch point, my route is restricted to the A6.

I've had obscenities shouted at me on the A6.  From a bloke driving on the opposite side of the two lane section, going in the other direction.  There's no way my presence could possibly have had any impact at all on him.  I wouldn't have delayed him or scared him or surprised him or had any kind of interaction prior to that encounter.  He just yelled abuse at me, a random stranger, for committing the sin of riding my bicycle home from work.

People seem to forget I'm flesh and blood, someone's daughter, lover, friend.  I've had, more than once, people move their cars to one side with the clear intention of blocking me.  It's hard to describe, but trust me, there's no other explanation for some of these.  People seem to resent me filtering sometimes, making a bit more progress than they are in their cars.  I don't know why that should be the case, nor why someone would wish to put my safety at risk because of it.  None of it makes sense.  People come from behind me, and turn left with a pretty high frequency, going across me, expecting me to, to, to what, exactly I cannot tell.  Disappear perhaps.  I'm not angry, I'm just sad when this happens, and I'm resigned to it too. I have coping strategies for such matters.  I'm alert to overtaking people, and watchful of their indicators.  I can slow down so they go round me without hitting me, or I can allow myself to be pushed over and turned left despite my wish to continue straight on.

But the Guardian article makes me afraid.  I've had several, what I can only describe as "punishment passes".  Punishment.  I don't know what it means.  I don't think you'd do it to your child.  Punishment in advance of something you think they are about to do?  Punishment because of something their brother did yesterday?  And what's the lesson I'm expected to learn from a close punishment pass?  Did it Serve Me Right?  Does it Teach Me A Lesson?  When articles like that become headlines, I leave the house anticipating a greater frequency of punishment being doled out because, well, cyclists are bad, and it proves that.

I don't understand.  400 people on foot are killed by people in cars every year, 100 cyclists are killed. Where are our headlines about those human beings?  Why aren't we on a crusade for each and every one of those, asking that sentences be punitive, asking that something is done about it?  Why don't those people matter?  We're people, all people, the ex courier was a person riding a bicycle, the woman who died was a person going about her daily business.  She didn't deserve to die that day, and her husband should not have become a widower.  Yet, if a person driving a car had taken her out, would we all have simply shrugged?  How would that have been fair either?

I wonder how we've ended up somewhere where people seem to think of cars as having some kind of life, thoughts, decisions of their own, why we don't identify clearly that each person driving a car is a person who has made decisions.  Why do we shrug our shoulders when something happens involving a car, in the same way we do if a dog is the perpetrator of a minor demeanour.  Ah well, he couldn't help it, he's just a dog.  Ah well, it's a car, that's what they do.  Except they have drivers, people, thinking human beings who should have compassion for the other human beings around them.

I'm worried, I'm afraid, and anticipate repercussions of this incident being on people going about their commuting or shopping or school runs, or daily life on their bicycles.  I'm scared.