Even though I try to ride a bicycle as often as I can, I still suffer from motonormativity. It is something very common and mostly unnoticed. Motonormativity goes by other names such as windshield bias or car-brain. In fact, the “normative” quality of it is an indication that it is an unconscious, ingrained, perspective of people living in car-driving societies.

My first exposure to the concept was through a recent YouTube video by a bicycling advocate who shared the results of a UK study done in 2023. The study was repeated in the U.S. a year later. Both studies had similar findings. The UK study surveyed more than 2,000 people randomly giving them one of two sets of questions that sought their views on risky scenarios. With just a couple of words changed between the two versions of a question, the scenario asked respondents to comment on either a wider general situation or a driving-specific one.

One example was the question: “People shouldn’t smoke in highly populated areas where other people have to breathe in the cigarette fumes.” “Agree or disagree” was the response solicited from the survey-taker, resulting in 75% agreeing with that statement. However, when the wording was changed to “People shouldn’t drive in highly populated areas where other people have to breathe in the car fumes,” the agreement rate dropped to 17%.

They asked multiple dual versions of these kinds of questions and the results remained consistent with the example just given. As an additional example, when asked if accepting risk should be considered a “natural part” of working, only 31% agreed. If asked the same question about driving, the agreement rate jumped to 61%, and on and on. People seem to be habituated to condone behaviors, when driving, that would not be as tolerable if applied to other activities.

How does motonormativity translate into our day-to-day behavior? I think I’ve only just begun scratching the surface in my own case. I will ride my bicycle to the post office in town on sunny days, a mere half mile away but always drive in wet weather, despite the fact that an umbrella is near at hand.

Additional evidence can be found in societal attitudes toward changing the layout of streets to accommodate pedestrian and bicycle travel. The reaction is more often negative and, though cloaked in a variety of justifications, according to the studies they can mostly be interpreted, on a more universal level, as being perceived as an attack on personal freedom by the more motonormative thinker.

Another YouTube video, also by a cyclist, talked about the change of behavior he witnessed when one of his bicycle riding buddies got behind the wheel of a car. After a weekend riding together in close contact, managing to give each other space in the moving pace line they were in, once they both were driving home, he was cut off by his friend while trying to merge into a line of other cars. The plea from that YouTuber was to encourage us to show each other more courtesy when driving: car driver to car/truck/bus driver, and car driver to bicyclist/pedestrian.

Driving a car seems, sometimes, to blind us to the notion of being courteous. One aspect of that courtesy was recently made legally necessary through the Vulnerable Road Users Law that went into effect on April 1st, 2023 in Massachusetts. Speaking from a bicyclist’s perspective, I can say we still have a long way to go, law or no law, in giving cyclists, pedestrians, horse riders, mobility scooter users, skateboarders, roadside workers, emergency responders, slow moving farm equipment, and other drivers getting into or out of their vehicles, etc. the four feet of space the law requires when passing.

Cars on the opposite side of the road should take into account the need oncoming vehicles have to find the required four feet to pass a VRU on that side of the road. Driving closer to the shoulder, when approaching from the opposite direction, can often give them the needed room. Reducing speed traveling in either direction, in order to time the pass when it is safest to do so, is also part of the expected range of possible outcomes. Those bicycle icon signs that started sprouting up at the time the law was enacted mostly serve as reminders that there is now a legal obligation to do this. Hopefully the desire to be courteous will actually be the motivation we use for making such changes in our behavior.

Philip Lussier lives in Ashfield and is a retired educator.