What do ya think? I think the kinds of transportation people use highly influences their perspectives of the world they live in and their relationship with it. There's a certain malaise to skating through the city, an art to performing tricks. I'm not saying all skaters have the same perspective, that'd be ridiculous to say, there are other experiences that influenced whom that individual is and is becoming. Drivers see a fast-moving world and only brief impressions of what's going on around them. The Situationists of pre-motorvehicle times surmised the concept of a "derive" as a "rapid passage through varried ambiences" and a kind of drift through their environment, perhaps with a destination in mind, but allowing their selves to be deviated or "drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there." The Situationists believed their was a psychogeography to our environment, subtle and not-so-subtle influences through sensations (from without) and our feelings and thoughts (from within), and their interrelation. Unlike the idea of drifting, it seems like most drivers travel from point A to point B. They see people also driving in their hunks of metal and/or plastic asides them as obstacles, as annoyances, and yeah occasionally pleasant too. Nonetheless the overarching behaviors and feelings from their interactions within traffic are negative and may transfer over to the times they aren't driving. I think the Situationists were wrong to say a derive is or has to be rapid. Walking and going on bicycle rides allow for alot more deviation from routine than a car does. (Albeit I'm forgetting the car adventures people can go on, its alot easier to get out of the city with a car than by any other means, and in rural areas you pretty much need a vehicle to get around.) Being a bicyclist as a part of traffic the bicyclist seems to take on a similar mindset as the driver. Though there's a big difference between a "joy-rider" and a "regular commuter". A major difference between a car and a bicycle is that the driver of a car is surrounded by a ton of steel or whatever, with a motor powered by gas, and the bicyclist maybe wears a helmet and pedals everywhere. Even a seemingly coy person can be aggressive behind the wheel of a vehicle. I think a point of consternation between the avid driver and.bicyclist ra-ra-raing schism is the outspoken and sometimes reckless spirit of bicyclists on the road versus vehicles being potential death-bringers and that there's a lopsided infrastructure that favors vehicles. Perhaps the outspokenness of some bicyclists is to make up for their vulnerability. In a way the bicyclists behavior is a softer variant of how motorcycle gangs sometimes have small ball-bearings hanging from the sides of their handlebars -- to smash a drivers window. Around motorcycles there's a veneer of a wild spirit and something else, (a laughing in the face of death?). Since alot of the early motorcyclists were military veterans from World War II. Walking in comparison to 20+ MPH is a slugs pace. In a way there is so much more going on in the world to a walker because of the amount of exposure to details going on and a deeper interrelation with what's going on. By taking the bus and light rail a public-transiter is around other people way more. Their still enclosed in a hunk of metal and plastic, but sharing that space with a bunch of other people, with a bus driver sort of regulating what's going on on their bus. On public transit there's still a certain etiquette of interaction socially. With light-rail there's a sorta more of a free-for-all with the operator a buttons' push away! That seems to go well, most of the time...
