Blaming cyclists, invisibilising drivers: How 🇨🇭 media report collisions 🚲 🚘

🔍 With Lucca Reymond we identified recurring biases in 204 articles on collisions
➡️ Cyclists are the focus
➡️ Drivers are omitted or invisible, replaced by their (autonomous?) car
➡️ Language (passive voice, non‑agentive phrasing...) obscures responsibility or points to the cyclist

For example, the most frequent title is "A cyclist injured"
➡️ The focus is the cyclist
➡️ No mention of the cause (collision)
➡️ No mention of a driver

The fact that a motorist is involved appears in only 42% of the titles but is usually depicted as "a car"

‼️ Media report do not reflect crash data. Responsibility in collision
➡️ Cyclist 28%
➡️ Motorists 64%
➡️ Both 8%

‼️ Road design and infrastructure are rarely mentioned, reinforcing the idea that collisions are individual mishaps rather than preventable outcomes. Only 1 of the 204 papers included an expert outside the police.

🧠 Why it matters
Media narratives shape public and political understanding of road safety. When reporting implicitly blames cyclists and normalizes driver invisibility, it becomes harder to build support for safer mobility policies (#motormativity).

📄 Full paper in Findings Press https://findingspress.org/article/157545-blaming-cyclists-invisibilising-drivers-how-motonormativity-shapes-swiss-media-collision-reports #OUVEMA