Call it Slaughter
by Patrick Field
Astronomers observe that the brightest stars burn for the shortest time. David Ramsden is dead -- slaughtered -- his beautiful body broken by a big machine operating in a public space. We who outlive him have lost his charming and generous presence. We have also lost all that his talent, energy and enthusiasm would have achieved had they bloomed for more than twenty-three years.
We
should remind ourselves now and again that we are far more likely to have our
life extended by the benefits of gentle exercise on a bike than to have it curtailed
by death or injury. But David's extinction demands consideration. A hundred
years of motor-culture ascendancy have made the taking of human life by those
operating motor vehicles a commonplace. It happens to some people, in some places,
every day. Let David stand for all the lives wasted by the metal plague. How
much longer and how many more?
A cyclist dies on a city-centre roadway: straight away you can make some shrewd guesses. It probably wasn't the result of a runaway skateboard. He or she may have been hit by a motorcycle or even a car, but usually it is a heavy truck, usually turning at a junction; usually.
We have all seen motor vehicles used to threaten others, but let us assume that when a road machine kills, its operator is not inspired by anger or hatred; has no murderous intent; just going about their business, normal, ordinary, sane.
The commonplace description of death on the highway as 'accident' emphases this lack of volition, this randomness. But in doing so it blocks a proper understanding of the reasons why these regular and predictable calamities are allowed to continue.
How else shall it be called? 'Crash' is euphemism. Crash is metal against metal, metal against masonry or concrete, while in this case a human being is involved. American English offers 'wreck', but this too gives the impression of something inanimate being destroyed. A building, an aeroplane, a ship, turns to wreckage. Human life represents something else.
Call it slaughter. Like 'accident' this lends absolution to the immediate perpetrator. The slaughterman does not hate the life he extinguishes. It happens every day. We all allow it. We are all complicit. Horror is not reduced when coupled with banality.
Call it terrorism. Travel by bike in Britain and you can expect to be treated as an outsider. 'You must be mad' declare the motor-dependent ones confidently, breaking off from complaining about 40 minutes spent looking for a parking space or explaining how they arrived an hour early to miss the rush hour. In the mean time we all breathe poisoned air and children grow flabby under house arrest.
An unspoken assumption exists that anyone interesting or important travels by motorised transport. Politicians of all shades treat 'citizen' and 'motorist' as interchangeable concepts. Waiting behind a bus the contented cyclist can read an advert placed by no others than Friends of the Earth bearing the legend 'Don't just sit there fuming'.
The operator of a motor vehicle is a consumer or a worker, maybe both. A cyclist is an outsider because he or she travels without making a transaction. While our rulers persist in classing earning and spending as the paramount forms of human activity and measuring 'standard of living' in only monetary terms, finding convenience, satisfaction, even joy outside a financial transaction is a heinous economic crime.
An act of political terrorism would be considered more remarkable, more unusual than a road 'accident'. David's slaughter is an awful tragedy but an unremarkable statistic, a small part of public life. Politics -- the art and science of government, the conduct of public affairs -- includes the setting of limits to legal behaviour and a tariff of punishments for transgressors.
The license currently allowed to the operators of motor vehicles -- to dominate our public spaces regardless of the cost to human life and conviviality -- is clearly political. Josef Goebbels, Nazism's primary propagandist, observed that 'whoever controls the streets, controls the masses, and whoever controls the masses, controls the state'. David's slaughter can be seen as an act of political terror, part of the tolerated, random culling of economic outlaws by State-registered consumers.
*****
David Ramsden was not an outsider. His CV included a spell as editor of XL, one of the recent outbreak of hedonistic, general interest magazines for young men. When a slot-car set was delivered to appear in a feature on Christmas gifts it was duly set up in the office and the racing was fast and furious. David applauded militant action against the depredations of motor dependence. He knew that riding a bike and encouraging others to do the same was taking action to save the world; but that's not why he did it. He did it because it was fun.
David was motivated by joy and love, not hatred and guilt. Neither was he a goody-goody. In our last conversation he gleefully recounted how on his recent departure from the United States, late arrival at the airport with bike had produced so much confusion that passport control failed to notice that his visa had expired months before.
Prodigious achievements at an early age are often accompanied by prima-donna tendencies. David had none. He was not a careerist but was set for a brilliant career. When he was broken an unalloyed force for good was lost. We who outlive him must strive to fill the gap -- an impossible task -- but we have his memory to inspire us.
© Patrick Field
Cycling & Mountain Biking Today, December
1996
David Ramsden was
a former editor of the magazine.