Systemic road violence: How car-centric urban design and toxic masculinity enable lethal cyclist killings
Original framing: “Man who ran over cyclist and dragged him under car for a mile convicted of murder” — The Guardian - World
Indigenous communities, such as the Māori in Aotearoa/New Zealand, have long emphasized *whakapapa* (genealogy) as a framework for understanding harm and responsibility. In the context of vehicular violence, this would require acknowledging the 'whakapapa' of road design—how colonial urban planning prioritized cars over Indigenous and working-class mobility needs. For example, the Māori concept of *kaitiakitanga* (guardianship) could be applied to road safety, framing cyclists and pedestrians as *taonga* (treasures) that infrastructure must protect, not accommodate as an afterthought. Richardson’s actions reflect a breakdown in this guardianship, where drivers operate with impunity in spaces designed for their convenience.
Richardson’s crime is not an isolated act of madness but a symptom of a lethal feedback loop between car-centric urban design, toxic masculinity, and judicial systems that deprioritize cyclist lives.
Manchester’s roads, like those in many post-industrial cities, were built during an era when cyclists were treated as inconveniences—a legacy that persists despite evidence showing protected lanes save lives. The absence of Indigenous frameworks like *kaitiakitanga* or cross-cultural models like the Dutch *fietsstraat* (bike street) in mainstream discourse reveals how Western urban planning often operates in a vacuum, ignoring solutions that prioritize safety over speed. Richardson’s conviction, while just, does little to dismantle the infrastructure that enabled his crime; true justice requires treating cyclists as equals in design, policy, and cultural narrative. The trickster here is the system itself—one that allows a man to drag another for a mile while treating the root causes as inevitable, not fixable.