Collective Responsibility?

Hi all,

I am currently writing up my findings for my dissertation and one of the core themes that appeared time and time again through my interviews was that of 'collective responsibility'. I've seen a few people on here disliking that term but without any explanation. I was wondering what your views are on it?

Thanks!

Drew

As in 'all people who wear blue pants should behave well less all those who wear blue pants might be viewed in a less positive light?'

What's the subject of your dissertation?

Collective responsibility is stereotyping and to be simplistic it's a bad but sadly inevitable aspect of human behaviour that enables us to quickly categories individuals as types.

It creates things like racism, sexism, ageism and modal transportism.

What's the subject of your dissertation?

"How one person's post on a beik forum gave all students a bad name"

I'm looking at how politics flows into cycling and affects policy changes and implementation of infrastructure.

The general view was that if someone on a bike jumps a red light then 'cyclists' are deemed to all jump red lights and thus seen as dangerous road users. Something to that effect.

The general view

Is it though?

That's the whole point of me starting this thread.

The general view was that if someone on a bike jumps a red light then 'cyclists' are deemed to all jump red lights and thus seen as dangerous road users. Something to that effect.

These were my findings regarding 'collective responsibility' solely from my interviews.

I work for a workers cooperative (Cycle Training UK). We operate as a collective sharing responsibility for the success (or failure) of our company. We each agreed to share this responsibility when we joined.

Where individuals haven't agreed to share responsibility collectively then there can be no collective responsiblity

But what about when CR is spuriously imposed on an unwilling non-group identified by their minority mode of transport by the Daily Fail / taxi drivers / David Cameron's mate writing in City AM?... what then?

@skydancer just killed your dissertation thesis.

If your thesis doesn't hold up to 5 minutes scrutiny on a bike forum, you'll never get it past the panel.

Hahah, luckily that's only one of the findings. Good to have some critical discussion!

Thanks for your input everyone!

The general view was that if someone on a bike jumps a red light then 'cyclists' are deemed to all jump red lights and thus seen as dangerous road users. Something to that effect.

I don't disagree with this, and by the same logic (as someone else pointed out) it would be right that we blame all drivers for killing Diana.

Who did you interview?

I interviewed 12 people, all from various Facebook cycling groups, of varied demographic.

I suspect they lied.

Because you were interviewing them.

In person, on-record... who wants to say they jump the lights and are fine with it?

In reality, every road user breaks the law at times and this is the norm not the exception. From speeding vehicles, to advance stop lines, to jumping lights, to signalling badly, to hogging a middle lane, to using a mobile device. The list is endless.

The only thing that matters: Was it safe?

If the answer is yes, that's all that matters.

Which means if the motorway is cruising at 90mph, being the one car below 70mph isn't safe. It's safer to break the law.

So long as it's safe... I take the law as guidance. Because frankly going on a green light isn't going to be enough to keep me alive if it wasn't safe. I go when it's safe, the rest is for people to bicker about.

Yes I agree. My questionnaire data, which was anonymous, revealed that they are happy to 'sometimes' jump red lights. And as you say, there is nothing wrong with that, as long as it was safe, both subjectively and objectively.

Here is a quote, one of many, from an interview where 'collective responsibility' was raised.

"You have to have an acceptance that collectively we have to stick to acceptable norms if we want to, as a group, collective group of transport users, be accepted and acknowledged and kind of respected by everyone else, so yeah, there has to be collective responsibility."

jump red lights and thus seen as dangerous road users.

This is questionable. Statistically RLJing isn't dangerous. (Wheras riding close to parked cars is very risky)

Statistically you may be correct, but other road users may not know this, or are ignorant to the fact. Therefore they see it as a dangerous act and then stereotype all cyclists as being risky. This is what my interviews seemed to reveal.

How were the interviewees selected? Was it random or did they self-identify as drivers or cyclists?

I don't think we (as cyclists) have collective responsibility for other cyclists' behaviour, but we (as road users) have a collective responsibility for everyone's safety.

To this end there exists a code. It's easy to break, often with very little direct consequence, but if nobody obeyed the code, the roads would be very unsafe.

They self-identified as cyclists. I wanted to look at drivers too but was told this was too much to analyse for an undergrad project.

Therefore they see it as a dangerous act and then stereotype all cyclists as being risky.

Yes many road users say they think RLJing is risky, however I suspect that for some, the reason why people dislike cyclists jumping lights is for other reasons, perhaps because this act highlights the freedom (to break the law/to move past a queue without waiting) of cycling in contrast to being trapped stuck in a metal box.

Encouraging people to elaborate more as to why they feel so strongly about cyclists RLJing may provide an interesting insight in the psychology of people moving around and how their core constructs affect their road behaviour.

I co-authored a paper for a Psychology Journal (PCP =Personal Construct Psychology) exploring this. Here is the abstract:

Carsick: construing risk when moving in the urban environment

A collaboration with Cycle Training UK has elaborated the role of PCP in thinking about reconstruing road space in relation to society’s goal encouraging active travel, i.e. getting people out of cars and onto bicycles and walking.  There is Fragmentation in relation to this goal and the construing of urban road planners prioritising car traffic movement rather than active travellers. Car drivers often construe themselves as more legitimate road users while cyclists are marginalised, physically, riding at the edge of the road, and culturally often considered transgressive (jumping red lights etc.). Cycling is often construed as dangerous and driving as safe but the statistics do not reflect this construing.  Cycling training frequently involves working with core existential issues with implications for a person’s core construing and Aggression (Assertion?) in their life as a whole.

PM me if you wish to see the paper

Interesting - so are you really looking at the feelings and beliefs of other people who cycle that they then project on to people in cars / who drive?

The general view was..

To what were they responding? Were they asked to define CR or to say how they felt themselves? Reason I ask is most people in a random survey would identify as drivers, their response might be how they actually feel or what they think others feel.