December 6, 2000


damn, that's annoying.
So, I'm really annoyed right now. I was about halfway through this entry, and getting really into it, and the damned cat stepped on top of the computer. I have a Cube. Y'all know where I'm going with this. The power button on the Cube is a proximity sensor right on top of the computer. Ada stepped on it, and promptly turned the damn machine right the hell off. Since I am lame and was really into what I was writing, I hadn't adhered to the "save early and often" mantra, and therefore, I am now starting this entry completely over. That's really annoying.

subscribe, dammit.
I had oringally written a nice little reminder that I have a notification/mailing list that you can read about here, but now I'm in a bad mood. So no niceties for you. Go sign up, dammit. Make me happy.

you want danger, huh? i'll show you what danger is, baby.
So today, I want to talk about danger. I've been involved in a couple of conversations lately that I've really been thinking about, and they're starting to merge together in my head to form an almost concrete philosophy. God knows that doesn't happen very often, so I wanted to write about it, to "get it down," as it were.

There's been a thread today on the Short Biker's List about the frequency with which non-riders feel the compelling urge to tell their biker friends all about their cousin's golf partner's neighbor who was hurt, killed, or otherwise maimed because of some sort of motorcycle issue. At the very least, if you tell enough people that you ride a motorcycle, you'll eventually start to realize that the most common response that you get is a shudder, nervous laugh, and "but that's so *dangerous*!" There are obvious exceptions for some people, but in my experience, those responses have most often come from people who don't know me very well. My mom is surprisingly mellow about it -- I think that she figures that she raised me to have common sense, and if I do something stupid on my bike and get hurt, well, I should have known better. I'm also lucky to have a significant other who also rides, and so motorcycles aren't a negative issue in our relationship like they are for some people. But I do hear it sometimes: that almost palpatable recoil in their voice, and always the same response, "but that's so *dangerous*!"

I'd like to back up for a minute now, and talk about another recent conversation that I had, in an entirely separate context. While on our way to the Caymans over Thanksgiving, Peter and I were fortunate enough to have a 4-hour layover in Miami. To kill some of the time, we rode the little tram/shuttle-thing between Terminal E and the main terminal (hey, let's see what *you* do with a 4-hour layover, huh?). On our way back to E, we had entered the shuttle, the doors were closing, and the little "please step back from the yellow line and hold onto a handrail" recording was playing. *Right* before the doors slammed shut, a well-dressed, heavily-jeweled, and heavily-makeuped middle-aged woman walked right up to the tram from the outside, and shoved her arm right between the doors. The safety on the doors caught, they bounced open, and she strolled right onto the tram. After we were on the plane, Peter and I started talking about this. "It's because people just expect to be taken care of nowadays," he said. "No one thinks that they need to be afraid of anything anymore, since they just *assume* that everything has a safety catch, or a handrail, or something else to save them from themselves." We talked about the hundreds of people who manage to kill themselves at the Grand Canyon, because there isn't a guardrail, and people just fall over the edge. I guess they assume that if there was a real danger, there'd be a guardrail, so since there isn't, there's nothing to be afraid of. It's like the woman on the tram: it was absolutely *inconceivable* to this person that the tram doors, rather than bouncing open upon sensing her arm, might instead lock closed anyways, trapping her, and then crushing her to death against the cement wall of the tunnel once the tram took off at 15mph.

People have become afraid of the *concept* of danger, rather than being afraid of dangerous things. It's "danger" the noun, not "danger" the adjective, which is causing people to shudder and tell me with a nervous laugh that my hobby is dangerous. It's fascinating. As many of you know, I work for a company called Danger Research. It's the damndest thing; whenever someone asks where I work, and I tell them, I get the same response that I do when I bring up motorcycling. Sometimes, people laugh and say something to the effect of, "hey, cool name," but sometimes....sometimes they look at me funny and give the nervous laugh and say, "'Danger,' huh? Do you, uh, like, do something...'dangerous'?" People get nervous at the mere mention of "danger" because they're so used to feeling like they don't have to worry about it. We live in the most dumbed-down nation in the world, and people have just gotten accustomed to not thinking about all about what they're doing. Let's think about this for a moment. Y'all know as well as I do that if that woman on the tram had broken her arm because of shoving her arm in the door, she would have sued the city of Miami before the cast had even come off. People are just not able to save themselves from themselves anymore. The woman who sued McDonald's because she spilled hot coffee on her lap and was burned? All because the little cup didn't save her from its contents, which she consciously *knew* were hot. And you can bet that if someone falls off the Grand Canyon and somehow doesn't die, there'll be a lawsuit (and then, probably, a guardrail) because there wasn't a railing there to save the moron from themselves.

People are living their whole lives in an animated state of avoiding their own responsibilties for their own actions, and therefore, suddenly, there's a scapegoat for everything. Nothing is anyone's fault anymore. Burned your leg? The coffee cup didn't hold coffee right. Late for a date with someone? A telephone call or co-worker distracted you. Your code doesn't work? Someone else's code deeper down must be buggy. Fell off the Grand Canyon? There's no guardrail.

A happy person is a safe person. A safe person is a healthy person. My SUV is safe because it's big and visible and since I have no sense of personal responsibility anymore because I live in my own little bubble of safety, I don't need to use my sideview mirrors, or rearview mirror, or turn signals, or horn, or defensive braking or accelerating. People will move away from *me* because I simply cannot *fathom* the concept of danger. It is inconceiveable to me that I might hit someone: a pedestrain, a bicyclist, a motorcyclist, another car. That happens in the movies and to other people; nothing bad happens to me, because life itself keeps me safe from myself.

People have an idea in their head that motorcycling is inherently dangerous. This idea is there because they read about it on the news; even to an idiot, it's easy to see that in a collision between a car and a motorcyclist, the odds are stacked well in favor of the car. People hear stories in movies, in the papers, from their doctors, from their cousin's golf partner's neighbor. Motorcycling is *dangerous*, and danger is scary. We don't like to think about danger, for all the reasons in the previous paragraphs. We don't like to think that the very *concept* of danger weakens our whole societal crutch of the scapegoat. With danger comes personal responsibility, and we just don't like to think about that. Therefore, a "normal" person, a "safe" person, would never ride a motorcycle.

It naturally follows that if you *do* ride a motorcycle, you're not "safe." Or "normal." Just as people can't fathom that those tram doors can, in fact, mess you up pretty badly, they can't fathom that someone would *intentionally* do something "dangerous." When I've gotten the "but that's *dangerous*!" reaction about my riding, I honestly couldn't tell you if the person in question would be happier/more satisfied if I told them that I ride because my car was in the shop and I had no other means of transport, or that I ride because I've been proven clinically insane and therefore don't know any better. With the former, they can rationalize the danger away by thinking, "well, at least she wouldn't ride if she didn't have to," and in the latter case, it's easy to distance oneself from the danger, because, well, *I'm* sane, of course, and *she's* nuts, so I certainly can't relate to her. The thought that I ride because I *like* to doesn't fit in with the world view of someone who has full faith that there will be a guard rail at the Grand Canyon if there's a chance someone might get hurt.

The irony of all of this, of course, is that motorcycling would be a lot *less* dangerous if the same people who shudder and call it "dangerous" would learn to accept danger into their own lives. I'd be a lot more confident on the road if I felt that the soccer mom in the minivan next to me believed in her own mortality and drove accordingly. A common response that bikers give to non-rider reaction is some variant of "a life lived in fear is a life half-lived." While I agree with this in theory, it also occurs to me that a lot of people could do with quite a bit *more* healthy fear in their lives. The next time someone responds to my riding with "but that's so *dangerous*!", I'm going to try to remember to respond by saying, "maybe, but at least I accept the danger in my life. What are you doing about the danger in *yours*?"

I'd be interested in people's feedback on this entry. Feel free to email me privately, or join the mailing list and let's chat there.


back | next | home