From ‘And then there is jogger rage’, 6 June 2011, Voices, Today online
(Edwin James Fawcett): …Last month, while I was cycling home from work along the Bedok canal on the designated cycle path, a jogger came straight at me.
Rather than cross onto the pedestrian section to avoid him, I stayed as far right as I could. I waved at the jogger to move across and there was no response. Eventually I had to stop, and as I was about to politely mention that he was in the cycle lane, he punched me in the face.
Now as you can imagine I was a little upset about this, so I dismounted and politely chastised him. He then ran off shouting racial abuse at me.
Having lived in Holland for many years, cycling is second nature to me. It is a little annoying seeing the very bad attitudes of pedestrians towards cyclists. Riding at the East Coast Park for example is a nightmare, with people blatantly walking on the cycle paths without a care in the world.
If Mr Fawcett’s account is genuine, then either he’s the most good natured cyclist in Singapore or his reaction to being assaulted by a mad jogger (a LITTLE upset) is a case of severe understatement. How could anyone even be ‘politely chastising’ his attacker after being sucker-punched? Most people would be reeling in shock at the bizarre nature of the incident, with a few chasing the jogger on their bikes to get even, as comical as that looks. It’s usually the other way round in the urban food chain, the pedestrian gets knocked down by the jogger, the jogger is knocked down by the cyclist, the cyclist by the car, car rams into a tree, and so on. This cyclist face-punching appears to be a rare case of a ‘run-and-hit-and-run” jogger.
This just proves how inadequate jogging is as a sport in sating our innate bloodlust, that the pumping adrenaline merely primes the jogger to unleash a fist of fury at anyone in their way, bulldozing through cyclists, pedestrians or even old people on a stroll if they have to. Such street violence is uncalled for, though it’s an expression of how stifled some people are without an outlet for male aggression, that when video game shoot-em-ups don’t help, sometimes a little pub brawl and alley scuffling without the police clamping down on the fun is all we need to release our pent up cravings for a little rough and tumble. Causing vicious hurt to cyclists isn’t the only crime that joggers can commit on the go, sometimes they’re serial molesters too ( See below, 9 May 1979, ST). Cyclists are as much of a nuisance themselves, if not dispersing happy families on pavements they’re knocking old people into a coma. It seems that with the surge of automobiles, we seem to have forgotten how dangerous bicycles could be. In the 1930s, it was even a crime to collide into police constables while you’re on a bike (P C Knocked down, 16 March 1932).
Filed under: 1930s, 1970s, 2011, Cyclists, Motorists, Pedestrians, Violence Tagged: | cyclists, joggers, Pedestrians, Violence
