In the last couple of weeks in the US, cycling has been in the news and general discourse a lot on both coasts.

In the west, California recently passed the “3-foot law”, the 23th state to do so (California is surprisingly backward in libertarian matters you’d think it would lead with).

Under the new law, motorists must maintain a 3-foot distance when passing a cyclist, and can be ticketed for not doing so. Before this, cars had to pass cyclists at a “safe distance”, a phrase open to wild interpretation.

On the east coast meanwhile, New York City is abuzz with the news of the woman who died after being struck by a cyclist in Central Park. The cyclist, who may or may not have been speeding, was a Strava user, and now that the website has entered mainstream dialogue, let me tell you about it. I’m a Strava user too—it’s like a Facebook for cycle rides. The rider uses the Strava mobile phone app or a GPS-enabled cycling computer that creates a ride file which is uploaded to the site. The rider (and his Strava buddies) can view a range of ride data such as average speed, cadence and heart rate. But that’s not all. Strava also maintains leaderboards for user-created ride segments, and so, every bike ride potentially becomes a race.

Cyclists themselves are heavily critical of other riders who misuse Central Park for racing, but there’s also concern for the larger story—the story across New York City and the US and the many countries in the world where car deaths are so common as to be almost unremarkable.

Hit by a car

When you hear about a person being killed after an impact with a cyclist, you instinctively cringe, feeling the impact, horrified at the massive forces that must be involved. But what if this woman was hit by a car? What about the other NYC woman, just a couple of days later who was hit by a car in a pedestrian crossing while pushing her baby in a pram?

Car-related incidents just don’t carry the same emotional weight. It’s terrifying, but we’ve become inured to news of people being slammed to death by multi-ton metal missiles piloted by other human beings.

Some watchers say the automatic ire against cyclists is because of the haziness of their status under the law. Are they pedestrians or vehicles? Why should they get to be whichever is most convenient at the time? Laws such as the 3-foot one have critics, but at least are helping make these rights and responsibilties a little clearer.

But this discussion goes much deeper than whether or not cyclists stop at red lights. I believe that we need to become sensitised again to the carnage that we no longer see, that we need to realise how much our cities have been taken from us as human beings and handed over to machines. Remember how much we owned our cities when we were young? How we played on the streets, rode our cycles everywhere, ran down to the corner shop for sweets? Do your children get to even walk to the gate without you cocking an eye for their safey? Our neighbourhood, like so many others is quiet, yet the streets are free of children — all safely kept inside for fear of the occasional car (one is all it takes, right?) that guns its engine and roars past, uncontrolled and unpunished.

The outrage about this cyclist killing a human being reminds us of the outrage we should feel every time a car driver does the same, but have forgotten how.

Gautam Raja is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles, USA.