On the Way to Cycle Rage: Disputed Mobile Formations

On a sunny Sunday afternoon in 2012 a conflict arose between two men riding a popular 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. This paper uses the video as data for an ethnomethodological analysis of the joint production, in real time, of an ordinary trouble that takes an unexpected turn. The two riders come across each other travelling downhill at speed on a narrow track, and quite quickly they develop a disputed mobile formation. The camera-clad rider wants to pass the older rider in front, and proceed at a faster pace, but except for an intriguing and brief interlude, the older rider will not let the other pass. Consequently, the camera-clad rider grows increasingly frustrated; the problem is, he is oblivious to the way his own actions in showing he is faster, result in dangerous tailgating. It is this, along with some ‘lecturing’, that annoys the older rider. At the end of the ride, complaints and accusations are made, and then a brawl breaks out. The paper uses snapshots and transcriptions from the video to analyse how visual, vocal and tactile aspects of their interaction, situated in the terrain they are travelling through, contribute to the conflictual ending.