considered human? The problem may come from the inhuman environment of traffic I have already described. Vehicles are moving at velocities for which we have no evolutionary training—for most of the life of the species we did not try to make interpersonal decisions at speed. So, when we’re driving and along comes a
person
on wheels, we cannot help but look at their face and, again, their eyes. In another study Walker performed, using photographs of cyclists and subjects hooked up to eye-tracking software, he found that the subjects’ gazes went instinctively toward the cyclists’ faces and lingered there longest, no matter what other information was in the picture.
Eyes are the original traffic signals. Walker has a good demonstration of this. On his laptop are two photographs of himself. In one, he is looking straight at the camera (i.e., the viewer). In another, he’s looking almost imperceptibly askance, but I could still feel, quite powerfully, that something had changed. How much had his eyes moved so that I knew he was no longer looking at me? A mere two pixels (out of 640 pixels across the width of the screen). What Walker is suggesting is that when we view a cyclist’s eyes, or even their arm motion, we begin—perhaps automatically—a chain of cognitive processing. We cannot help but look for those things we seek out when we see another person. This seems to take longer than looking at mere things, and it seems to involve more mental effort (studies have shown that electroencephalographic, or EEG, readings spike when two people’s eyes meet). We may be trying to gauge more from them than simply which direction they are going to turn. We may be looking for signs of hostility or kindness. We may be looking for reciprocal altruism. We may look where they are looking rather than see what their arm is signaling.
Whether or not we realize it, we are always making subtle adjustments in traffic. A kind of nonverbal communication is going on. Walker revealed this in a powerful way when he moved from the lab setting to the actual road. As a cyclist himself, he was curious about the anecdotal accounts from cyclists who said, in effect, that the more road space they took up, the more space passing cars gave them. He was also curious about survey reports that hinted that drivers tended to view cyclists wearing helmets as more “serious, sensible and predictable road users.”
Did any of this matter on the road, or did cars simply pass cyclists
as
cyclists, more or less randomly? To find out, Walker mounted a Trek hybrid bicycle with an ultrasonic distance sensor and set out on the roads of Salisbury and Bristol. He made trips wearing a helmet and not wearing a helmet. He made trips at different distances from the edge of the road. And he made trips dressed as a man and dressed as a woman, wearing, as a rough signifier of gender, a “long feminine wig.” After he had crunched the data, the numbers revealed an interesting set of patterns. The farther he rode from the edge of the road, the
less
space cars gave him. When he wore a helmet, vehicles tended to pass closer than when he did not wear a helmet. Passing drivers may have read the helmet as a sign that there was less risk for the cyclist if they hit him. Or perhaps the helmet dehumanized the rider. Or—and more likely, according to Walker—drivers read the helmet as a symbol of a more capable and predictable cyclist, one less likely to veer into their path. In either case, the helmet changed the behavior of passing drivers.
Finally, drivers gave Walker more space when he was dressed as a woman than as a man. Was this a “novelty effect” based on the fact there are statistically fewer female cyclists on England’s roads? Or were drivers simply thinking, “Who is this crazy man-cyclist wearing that terrible wig?” Or were drivers (whose gender Walker was not able to record) giving women cyclists more room out of some sense of politeness or, perhaps, as he
person
on wheels, we cannot help but look at their face and, again, their eyes. In another study Walker performed, using photographs of cyclists and subjects hooked up to eye-tracking software, he found that the subjects’ gazes went instinctively toward the cyclists’ faces and lingered there longest, no matter what other information was in the picture.
Eyes are the original traffic signals. Walker has a good demonstration of this. On his laptop are two photographs of himself. In one, he is looking straight at the camera (i.e., the viewer). In another, he’s looking almost imperceptibly askance, but I could still feel, quite powerfully, that something had changed. How much had his eyes moved so that I knew he was no longer looking at me? A mere two pixels (out of 640 pixels across the width of the screen). What Walker is suggesting is that when we view a cyclist’s eyes, or even their arm motion, we begin—perhaps automatically—a chain of cognitive processing. We cannot help but look for those things we seek out when we see another person. This seems to take longer than looking at mere things, and it seems to involve more mental effort (studies have shown that electroencephalographic, or EEG, readings spike when two people’s eyes meet). We may be trying to gauge more from them than simply which direction they are going to turn. We may be looking for signs of hostility or kindness. We may be looking for reciprocal altruism. We may look where they are looking rather than see what their arm is signaling.
Whether or not we realize it, we are always making subtle adjustments in traffic. A kind of nonverbal communication is going on. Walker revealed this in a powerful way when he moved from the lab setting to the actual road. As a cyclist himself, he was curious about the anecdotal accounts from cyclists who said, in effect, that the more road space they took up, the more space passing cars gave them. He was also curious about survey reports that hinted that drivers tended to view cyclists wearing helmets as more “serious, sensible and predictable road users.”
Did any of this matter on the road, or did cars simply pass cyclists
as
cyclists, more or less randomly? To find out, Walker mounted a Trek hybrid bicycle with an ultrasonic distance sensor and set out on the roads of Salisbury and Bristol. He made trips wearing a helmet and not wearing a helmet. He made trips at different distances from the edge of the road. And he made trips dressed as a man and dressed as a woman, wearing, as a rough signifier of gender, a “long feminine wig.” After he had crunched the data, the numbers revealed an interesting set of patterns. The farther he rode from the edge of the road, the
less
space cars gave him. When he wore a helmet, vehicles tended to pass closer than when he did not wear a helmet. Passing drivers may have read the helmet as a sign that there was less risk for the cyclist if they hit him. Or perhaps the helmet dehumanized the rider. Or—and more likely, according to Walker—drivers read the helmet as a symbol of a more capable and predictable cyclist, one less likely to veer into their path. In either case, the helmet changed the behavior of passing drivers.
Finally, drivers gave Walker more space when he was dressed as a woman than as a man. Was this a “novelty effect” based on the fact there are statistically fewer female cyclists on England’s roads? Or were drivers simply thinking, “Who is this crazy man-cyclist wearing that terrible wig?” Or were drivers (whose gender Walker was not able to record) giving women cyclists more room out of some sense of politeness or, perhaps, as he
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