It’s soon going to be known as The Wheelie Wars. That title, one feels, is around the corner. Already, a new term has been coined: Dooring. It’s what you do when you open a car/taxi door to alight and in doing so block someone’s path outside so that they run into the door. Sometimes it’s a person; other times, another vehicle.
Back in the day it happened regularly in comedy films. Doors were always coming unhinged or sent flying, after impact with another car. It was amusing to watch the bemused expression on the face of the person that opened the door only to witness it, seconds later, hurtling down the highway. It caused volleys of laughter in the cinema.
It’s causing mounds of confusion today, however. There’s a face-off taking place and the arena is the busy highways and byways. The combatants are not really duelling motorists. It is car vs bicycle. And neither is willing to concede an inch, both (rightfully, in a sense) claiming that the road is theirs too.
Go get yourselves a licence before encroaching on our legalised space, say the motorists. Bicyclists jeer at this logic, they not being required to hold a licence when riding their bikes. Things have reached an impasse. Meanwhile, reports of ‘dooring’ and deliberate blocking/intimidation are on the increase.
What’s to be done? Simple, say some. Re-chalk the roads. Create a special lane for bicycles. State bodies, however, are allegedly harrumphing.
That’s what you get when the will is nil, says my friend Barney, who from time to time breaks into rhyming utterances.
“What’s it like in India?” he asks.
“Same old, same old. Every Joe, Jack and Billy pedaling willy-nilly,” I offer, if only to tease. He is not amused, which is characteristic, especially when his attempt at humour ricochets back on him. Besides, today, Barney is trying to play Mr Good Citizen and find a solution to the impending road war. He, perhaps, has visions of being invited to the mayor’s office and finding himself on the receiving end of a warm mayoral handshake followed by several celebratory rites such as a pinned medal and a printed scroll extolling the virtues of his insight, which he can frame tastefully and eye-catchingly, and hang strategically on his wall, and show to his children and grandchildren.
I say all this because Barney’s gaze has suddenly turned ‘inward-looking’, he’s momentarily lost the thread of our conversation. I suddenly realise that his far-off gaze is actually not that far. I realise this, of course, after casting a glance over my shoulder for I espy our mutual friend, Ryan, the school teacher, striding towards us, coffee in hand.
“So two paintings are going to be on display at the Glebe gallery,” says Barney, as Ryan arrives and pulls up a chair.
“What?” I ask, perplexed.
“The son’s art work. He’s a painter, course you knew that, Kev?”
“Yes,” I reply, “but when did we start discussing painting? What about what we were just talking about?”
“Which is?” asks Ryan, interestedly.
“Oh, just the boring weather and stuff,” says Barney.
I know now he’s being evasive. Characteristic again, especially in the presence of Ryan who’s known him for years.
“We were discussing the sorry state of the roads vis-a-vis the cyclist-motorist clashes,” I offer.
“Oh?” says Ryan, rubbing both hands, not because it’s cold but because he, too, enjoys the rare chance of turning the tables on his good old prankster friend. “Did Barney tell you how and where his vigilante aspirations ended back in ... when was it 1989?”
Barney is stony faced.
“Well you see,” begins Ryan, “he was driven off the road by this battered Ford ...” And ends: “It was a hard bed at the cop station that night. Ask him.”
A cautionary afterthought: In situations like these it’s still worth waiting for slow-moving governments to ‘get on their bike’ rather than take the law into one’s own hands.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
