‘It’s on video, every second of it’: a micro-sociological analysis of cycle rage

Abstract

A case study is presented of a violent incident that arose between two men riding a mountain biking track in New Zealand. This gained both local and international attention after one of the riders posted his video of the incident on a social media site where it went ‘viral’. The video helped identify the other rider, who was taken to trial and convicted of assault. The fairness and means of the conviction is not at issue here, rather, the interest is in the video as a rare record of the joint production, in real time, of an ordinary trouble that takes an unexpected turn. The two riders catch up with each other, travelling downhill at a decent speed on a narrow track. Their riding requires significant concentration, nevertheless, while biking they are able to communicate, verbally and visually. This communication shows disagreement about the format of their riding-together, with the camera-clad rider wanting to pass the older rider in front, and proceed at a faster pace. Except for an intriguing and brief interlude, however, the older rider will not let the other pass. Consequently, the camera-clad rider grows increasingly frustrated, but the problem is he is oblivious to the way his own tailgating affects the rider in front. It is the tailgating, along with some ‘lecturing’, that annoys the older rider. At the end of the ride both stop, complaints and accusations are made, then a brawl breaks out. Adapting Katz’s (1999) work on emotions, we see both riders doing being ‘pissed off’, but with one shifting to ‘being done’ by his anger, escalating into violence. Screensnaps and transcriptions from the video are used to analyse the fine detail of a 5-minute mountain bike gone wrong.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the reviewers who provided some useful comments on an earlier draft of this article. For help and comments along the way thanks also to Eric Laurier, Max Baddeley, Sanna Fourt-Wells, Steve Lloyd and Guz Benzie.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

[1] A forthcoming paper focuses on the middle section of the ride, looking in detail at the actions that build in a stepwise fashion to the heightened emotions that spill over at the end of the track.

[2] On this point, note that incidents of conflict between cyclists and car drivers, including those that lead to road rage, are known to commonly happen. In some cases, these are captured on video and are widely shared. For an example of a recent incident in San Francisco, see http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-san-francisco-bicycle-road-rage-arrest-20150908-story.html (accessed September 17, 2015).

[3] This point is made on the basis of my own experience of mountain biking, including frequent reading of mountain biking magazines and websites.

[4] Many thanks to Shawn Spomer, Content Director, Vital MTB.com

[5] This also supports the inference that Brizzell knows the track well; usually when riding a track for the first time, mountain bikers are more cautious and do not ride ‘full out’.

[6] To speculate, it may be that Brizzell was hoping that the mere sight of a ‘faster rider’ would result in Dalton allowing him to pass. Often, riders do not need to communicate to facilitate a pass. In other cases simply yelling ‘track!’ is sufficient communication and will facilitate a pass. This again serves to emphasise that on a fast downhill ride, concentration is so intense that verbal communication with other riders can be an unnecessary distraction.

[7] The transcription symbols used here follow the conventions of Conversation Analysis (see Schegloff 2007a for more details).

[8] Here I am using the principles of Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) (Schegloff 2007b), but there is not sufficient space to explain this or its technical terms; moreover, it is not necessary to go into great depth on MCA for the level of analysis desired here.

[9] There are various codes of mountain biking, but none of these have the equivalent status of the formalised codes by which car drivers can be tested and licenced. Most discussions of trail courtesy in mountain biking have to do with giving way to pedestrians, runners and horse riders on shared tracks, and contact with other mountain bikers is often left to common sense, which is partly why problems can arise.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mike Lloyd

Dr Mike Lloyd is a sociologist at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has published on diverse topics often related to the sociology of everyday life and has recently turned his attention to the challenging task of analysing mobile interaction captured in video data.