How accurate of a witness do you think you’d make? I was left wondering about my own abilities after being in the middle of a scary situation one Saturday afternoon.
It started as an ordinary ride
The afternoon was sultry and hot as I rode my bicycle along Paint Creek Trail, Michigan, a rail trail where the crushed limestone path often widens and narrows. This beautiful shaded trail is shared by walkers, bicyclists, joggers, parents pushing strollers, dog walkers, recumbent cyclists and even unicyclists. Everyone is supposed to keep to the right, and bicyclists are to give warning when passing.
Not everyone is courteous, however
I was bicycling on the right as a pedestrian was walking on the opposite side of the trail. Ahead, two cyclists riding single file were barreling along as if they were in the Tour de France. They moved from their right to the center, to pass between the pedestrian and me, and my first thought was, “Oh, no. Are they going to pass this guy with me here? Can’t they slow down and wait?” I nervously moved to the side and kept steady, knowing it would be a tight squeeze.
Then the pedestrian, a tall, middle aged man in a white shirt and shorts, suddenly flung his arm out from his side.
The altercation
Seconds later I heard shouts behind me: “What the f*ck! You wanna go at it? Right here? Wanna go at it?” I stopped and turned. One of the bicyclists had dropped his bike in middle of the trail and was in the pedestrian’s face, pointing and shouting as the man backed away. “You f*cking clotheslined me! You clotheslined me. Do you know how f*cking dangerous that is?”
A few people stopped. Another bicyclist hopped off his bike, held out a cell phone and told them, “You’re on video. I’m recording you. You really want to do this? Let it go…” The bicyclist jumped up and down and shouted for a few minutes more, but finally everyone let it drop and went on their way.
Minutes later, at the Tienken Road crossing, the man who had been filming rode up next to me. He shook his head and said “It’s amazing how quickly fights are resolved when you tell people you’re recording them.”
The details? I can’t say for sure
This man had only seen the altercation, not the incident that caused it, so I told him what had happened. I said the pedestrian had been walking in the same direction as I was riding. Then, when I got home and told my husband, I realized I was wrong– the man had to be walking on his right, so we were, in fact, moving in opposite directions as the bikers passed him, whizzing between us. Yes. I vaguely remembered his face.
My husband asked, “How did the pedestrian know the cyclists were passing him?” I don’t know. I didn’t hear a bell or a shout out from the cyclists. Maybe he heard them approaching? Or he glanced back? I just remember his arm flying out. Maybe after one cyclist passed, the man stuck his arm out for the second rider.
It surprised me that initially I remembered the pedestrian as walking in a different direction, and that I couldn’t remember details. It happened fast, and I was in the thick of it, but I may not make a good witness.
Eyewitness testimony and memory
There was a time when eyewitness testimony was considered the best evidence in a criminal case. But recent scientific studies cast doubt on its reliability. The problem is memory is like a giant puzzle. It seems as if the human brain puts pieces, some possibly fabricated along with the real, together in order to create a memory, or a narrative, of what happened.
When it comes to identifying perpetrators, things can get even fuzzier. The Innocence Project is a nonprofit team that re-examines questionable murder convictions. In the first 130 cases the Innocence Project overturned, eyewitness testimony played a part in 78 percent of those wrongful convictions.
I guess it doesn’t really matter which way the man on the trail was facing. As the bicyclist who recorded the uproar on the trail said to me, “It sounds as if they both thought they ‘owned’ [the trail].”
But it really made me think about eyewitness testimony, and how often memory fails us.