Bloody cyclist!

OK its no secret, I'm a keen cyclist with one of my rants being [check previous blog] around aggressive and inconsiderate road users and their attitude and actions towards other road users. Today while in Dunedin I rode past one of those signs "Share the road" took the snap and decided to take it to task later in my weekly blog.

Do you really think that this signage and education makes any difference? Does it change the behaviour of a road rage induced individual with a strong sense of entitlement? Lets take a wee looksie at this then...

Dale Carnegie in his famous book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" made the statement "A man convinced against his own will is of the same opinion still". No doubt as one of my blog readers [the ones that don't read my blog are probably not very mature in thought] you've had many a discussion with work mates and family [no one you would choose to be a friend] around issues that they believe to be correct even in the face of a mountain of evidence adamantly stating the opposite of what is proven [flat earth types]. So I believe that the signage here could be falling on deaf ears, only reinforcing to other cyclists like myself that we're right creating a sense of righteousness potentially fueling the rage issue even more.

Secondly how do we respond to be being preached at? hmmm, not very well and the reason this is so is that many of us have to understand the reasons behind the rule or statement for us transform our attitudes and actions. Does this sign do that?

OK, so Ive bought into question the potential success of the sign, I do feel that the designers of this sign have the best of intentions to have us all be safe and enjoy the right to a conflict free journey. What could we do to change the nature of this signage? I'm not proposing a strategy to transform every road user, as that takes time to change attitudes and can take generations, but we could make the tone softer, less preachey and potentially more effective,

...How... in my opinion two simple words are missing...

We drum these words into our kids from an early age and the reason we teach our children to do this is that we realise as grown ups that the way to increase the success of life is to mind your P's and Q's. So we could say please share the road, but that again assumes that some might not want to or we don't share, so...

...How does this read to you? please comment back, i'd love to know your thoughts...

Thanks

for

Sharing the road

 

Posted with Blogsy