What do you think about motorists? (For research paper)

A strange question I know.
This is for a paper to be published in a psychology journal about how drivers and cyclists view each other.

The view of how drivers view cyclists was taken from a question asked of professional drivers on courses and their answers ranged from "a menace" "Law breakers" "A nuisance" to "Good for the environment" etc. There is less generalisation about motorists which is why some anecdotal comments here will be useful.

So if you've got a second could you answer this simple (simplistic) question:

What do you think of motorists?

Ta!

Menacing, nuisance law-breakers who are bad for the environment.

Lazy, distracted, dangerous, dirty, fat, stupid, aggressive, arrogant, losers who don't give a crap about anyone apart from themselves

On the whole my attitude is that they're people, prone to behaviour triggered by emotions in control of large, heavy and potentially deadly vehicles.

The ones that stick in my head because of their actions tend to be lazy, complacent, irrational risk takers with ill informed opinions confused as fact.

They're probably just people, exactly like cyclists. At least all the ones I've met are. Some of them have even had a go on a bike once or twice!!

I think it might be more beneficial to not try to split cyclists and motorists into two distinct groups - something which I feel increases the distance and animosity between the two. It suggests that you have to take sides, or that there even is a 'side' to take.

Indeed, there should be no "us and them" between us and them.

Motorists, they're human too.

Of course you are right that is your view @bmx_fred. Other will have different views and will generalise as already noted on the thread.

People do find it easy to stereotype cyclists as you see in the media, shock-jock radio etc (all jump red lights, lawless, arrogant etc,) yet less so for motorists. For this paper and for balance I have asked this question.

The paper is from the perspective of Personal Construct Psychology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_construct_theory) which looks at how individuals construe things and how their behavior relates to that especially when their view about something is challenged

Motorists are fine. It's wankers in cars that are not fine.

One technique used in Personal Construct Psychology to gauge the way an individuals view (construing) in an particular area is to ask them to write a self characterisation in the third person which is often quite revealing of their core constructs.

If you'd like to have a go at this it would be really helpful for this paper. I did this and what came out surprised me...

He felt he owned the road on his bicycle, that he had an equal if not more right to space on the streets since his transport choice was benign, good for him, good for everyone. he shunned driving, finally giving up driving for good, not wishing to use a machine that can harm the earth and people on the earth. He was moved to tears whenever he heard that another person has been injured or killed by someone in a car, was livid when drivers got away with murder if committed from behind a wheel, was angry every time a person in a car was hostile, used their horn to intimidate him, or was sloppy, careless, he hated motorists feeble excuse 'sorry mate I didn't see you', those drivers not intending to harm yet not being responsible operating a machine that can cause such violence, not being extra careful vexed him. He dreamt of the banning of seatbelts in favor of a spike that came out of the steering wheel as a way to get drivers to take care. He knew that people benefit when other people cycled, so he encouraged others to cycle. He believed that people who drive could not wish other to engage in their nasty habit and construed driving and drivers as immoral and selfish. (Though he was aware that some people genuinely needed to drive for the quality of their lives. His Mother suffered from MS and had much more independence thanks to being able to get around in a car).

Motorist are and will be .
My real problem is the noise these machine made, especialy new stuff like yamaha Tmax.
Maximum decibel permitted in the law is 80 dB for motobike above 175cm3.
Yamaha says 88 Db for the tmax.

I've drawn parallels before about how motorists interact with other road users, and how e.g. twitter users interact with each other.
Simply put, I think there's a vague degree of (perceived) anonymity which causes people to act in very antisocial ways. Anger, insults, not backing down from an incorrect position, threats of violence, etc. Basically, if a lot of people interacted with random people on the street as they do whilst using a motor vehicle or social media, then I think there'd be a lot more violence in the world.

Drivers are people, just like cyclists. No surprises then that there's a lot of intersection between the two groups. And that's really all there is to it. In their current situation they're simply guided by two things; a) the desire to achieve an ends that they've set out on and b) their personal motivations and expectation about how that ends will be achieved. Cyclists and drivers run in very close parallel in that respect and for the most part I really don't think about drivers. They're just another person on the same bit of designated travelling space that I'm in and there's nothing to think about.

When we think about them, we're looking at a choice of transport mode. Or more accurately for drivers, from my point of view, a lack of choice. They're following a default model of activity. If you fit within a broad set of standard life circumstances, you'll drive a car because it's the norm. And the more people drive, the more driving becomes reinforced as the norm. The out of town shopping centres, the council managed tarmac to an acceptable distance from your front door, the expectation of a parking space at the majority of your functional destinations, the supermarket selling you on the idea of a big weekly shop... The examples go on, feel free to add your own. In our British environment, it's just what we do. We drive. I'm aware of the disparity between the view and the reality but that's kind of part of being people, we think in these herd/pack mentalities.

I could denigrate drivers for this choice or absence thereof but I know I'm not so superior myself. I eat three meals a day, drink a nice cup of tea in the face of grave adversity, sleep when it's dark, have a bank account and thousands of other things we don't really make a choice about. When I think about drivers I'm usually reacting to two things; when they come into conflict with me as a cyclist (or driver or pedestrian) and when they express thoughts about me based on my mode of transport. It varies from driver to driver. There are some broad categorisations that are based on repeating evidence. Professional drivers are generally better so both courtesies and dick moves are more likely a deliberate act. Thankfully the former seems more common where I ride. Sweeping accusations of lawlessness are hypocritical in the face of speeding, mobile phone use etc... I think that in an era of growing congestion unsafe behaviour has become normalised. Speeding to keep with the flow of traffic, failure to leave braing distances. So any safety record we have is more down to luck than judgement. I still think there's a majority misunderstanding of cyclists among motorists. They don't really get that we're people like them, trying to do much the same thing, in a manner isn't as different as they imagine. Like them we'll exploit the advantages of our mode of transport. We're people, it's what we do.

We see a lot of blaming drivers for being the more dangerous entity on the road but I don't think that's strictly fair just because they've kind of not made the decision we have.

tl;dr

I still think there's a majority misunderstanding of cyclists among motorists. They don't really get that we're people like them, trying to do much the same thing, in a manner isn't as different as they imagine. Like them we'll exploit the advantages of our mode of transport. We're people, it's what we do.

Yeah, I was thinking something very similar this morning on the way to work. 80/90% of cyclists can/do drive, but what's the percentage of motorists out there who actually know how to/what it's like to ride on the road? If we discount people pootling about with their kids to the park and back, it's probably under 20%, if not much lower.

Thats really useful (long: did read:)
It is relevant to this paper in that you put the fact that drivers are generally doing what they do as it is a cultural norm and few really feel they have a choice. Which is what this paper is about. How drivers and cyclists interact, why. and if we want fewer people to drive for obvious reasons, then what interventions are we/ should we be putting in place to give drivers other choices and change this cultural norm.

Thanks @The_Seldom_Killer

We see a lot of blaming drivers for being the more dangerous entity on the road but I don't think that's strictly fair just because they've kind of not made the decision we have.

But, aren't they the more dangerous entity on the road? Regardless of the decision they have or have not made, they're still at the controls of a 1+tonne of metal with the potential to seriously injury/kill.

Two wheels good, four wheels bad.

Absolutely, and I'm not disputing that at all.

But when we start blaming them for that, it introduces an element of victimisation into the us and them relationship that we have. I don't think the blame is wholly justified in the manner that it is most frequently presented and the ensuing victimisation is toxic to our relationship. As the vulnerable party in this relationship, we don't benefit from this toxicity, quite the opposite.

Trapped.

It appears I am both them and us.

As a motorist covering over 35,000 business miles a year, Id say that most other road users are generally OK, but there are a percentage, both male in stereotypical big Audi / BMW / MERC / Range Rover, who consider themselves special and above the law, (why else would they hold a mobile phone to their ear in a £50k car with bluetooth as standard) and there are many female drivers, usually young and always in a small hatch / BMW 1 series / Audi 1 series who drive way too fast and have no idea of the risks they are running. Then of course there are the elderly with generally poor eyesight and frighteningly slow reactions who consider themselves excellent drivers and who are affronted by any comment / indication to the contrary, and lastly the arrogant couldn't give a stuff guys driving white vans, 7.5 tonne lorries, scaffold trucks etc, who really don't care who they hit, injure or upset and who revel in intimidating other road users.

I consider these all to be a danger to me and to one another.

As a cyclist.... ^^^ this ^^^

For me there's just people, ignorant selfish people, unconscious bastards, that don't mind playing with your life while walking, cycling, running, driving or running a country... when you encounter one while cycling is the same shit as when you encounter one while driving a car/motorbike... try to survive.

Anyway, driving a beast with lots of power, you tend to feel like you own the road, or you have the right of way over others (even other cars)...

I was on a bus yesterday afternoon that was crawling slowly with the almost gridlocked traffic.
A young woman behind me was bitterly complaining on her phone to her mother that she was going to miss her hospital appointment and she was definitely going to learn to drive and get a "fucking car".

Yes. They've surrendered their freedom. They're bombarded with fantasies about driving on deserted roads. For many people their car is the most important social status signifier. For disenfranchised people driving a car is the only time they feel powerful. Car adverts are aggressive, Skodas are made out of snakes or something, aggressive driving is promoted and glamourised in movies, efforts to curb aggressive driving are considered by extreme libertarians an outrageous imposition. My colleague who drives a mile to work spends about 10% of her salary on her car. She's enslaved. Millions of drivers have surrendered their freedom to cars and some of the most powerful corporations in the world devote billions of pounds to promoting car dependence. So people use 200 horse power to go and buy some chips or a newspaper. It's insane.

I was tempted to say something very similar but didn't .
I could of tried to explain that you - missy - driving a car would have added to the problem (and there was plenty of time to have this discussion) but the concept of 'you are the traffic'
may have got lost.

I think motorists are other people trying to get somewhere. They could be tired, bored, angry, happy, frightened, needing a piss, horny, relaxed, exited or wistful. Most motorists right now are probably in their houses washing up or watching telly.