I’m a cyclist and I can’t stand cyclists. I fear them and am often infuriated by the way they behave, although I must emphasize that I am not perfect either.
I hate, with a fury of red fog, the cyclists I see every day speeding across pedestrian crossings or red lights. Sometimes I chase them down and catch them to tell them what I think (panting as I do so) and point out that it is perfectly possible to move fast without running red lights, or I wouldn’t have caught up with them.
Now I really hope that another cyclist kills me, after believing for many years that the final blow would be delivered by a Porsche driver or some giant truck.
Now I fear one of those slouching morons, dressed like an insect in comically tight, flashy clothes, with a Styrofoam bowl on his silly head and funny colored sunglasses, maybe masked too.
He will pass me on the inside and accidentally push me under a bus coming up behind us. I take great precautions against this, but these idiots keep silent and come out of nowhere, like the Nazi Messerschmitt pilots in the Battle of Britain. One lapse in concentration and I’ll be lying under Number 27, while the oaf responsible fades into the distance, listening to dub rap in his headphones.
I’m a cyclist and I can’t stand cyclists. I fear them and am often infuriated by the way they behave, although I must emphasize that I am not perfect either.
I think there must be some school or club that teaches these people how to do this, since many times they surpass me inside.
Too many two-wheeled warriors, in addition to being stupid, now travel too fast and have too high an opinion of themselves. I can think of no other explanation for the recent horrific event in London’s Regent’s Park, where a phalanx of cyclists were speeding, probably almost 30mph, early on a Saturday morning.
One of them ran over Hilda Griffiths, 81, who was walking with her dog down the street towards a pedestrian island. It took her two months to die, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that her death was caused by the accident.
The speed limit for cars on that road is 20 mph. But it doesn’t apply to touring bikes for several perfectly sensible reasons. One is that they don’t have speedometers. The other is that when speed limits were introduced, touring bicycles were made of steel and were ridden mostly upright by ladies and gentlemen, dressed in normal clothing, at not much more than 15 km/h.
The man who hit her, Brian Fitzgerald, was not prosecuted because he had committed no crime under the law. Mrs Griffiths’ son Gerald says her mother was murdered by a “cycling culture” and this is what made me agree readily.
Cyclists, once the abused third-class citizens of the roads, have now become as arrogant and authoritarian as the worst drivers.
It used to be the other way around. Until recently there was an anti-cycling culture. When I started cycling to and from work in London in the 1970s, the capital’s roads were a battlefield with almost everyone else treating the rare cyclist as an outcast and a nuisance.
As for clothing, the bug gear sported by famous cyclists such as radio and television presenter Jeremy Vine was unknown.
They booed you just for being there, maybe ten times a day. There were no bike lanes or advanced stop lines at traffic lights. The bicycles themselves were generally much heavier than now.
Their weak lights disappeared in a matter of seconds if you left them in the machine. Its gears were often minimal and tended to jam; or they were controlled by complicated levers that couldn’t be adjusted without removing one hand from the handlebars.
The brakes were incredibly bad and almost useless in the wet. The punctures were incessant, as modern defense technology had not yet provided Kevlar to reinforce our tires. All the motor vehicles passed at a distance of about ten inches, as if trying to make a point.
It was a fight and I never recovered from it, instinctively assuming that all motor vehicles are dangerous enemies every time I go out. This deep instinct, even today, sometimes leads me to abruptly reject drivers’ attempts to give way to me at intersections. I fight it, but it probably kept me safe for many years, and now it’s hard to give it up.
I remember being moved almost to tears on a cycling holiday in France in the 1980s as French drivers surrounded me like I was a truck. The only person who nearly threw me into a ditch in Normandy had a GB license plate on his car.
One of them ran over Hilda Griffiths, 81, who was walking with her dog down the street towards a pedestrian island.
The paths of the great Royal Parks were forbidden to us. What is now one of central London’s main cycle paths, allowing cyclists to cycle around the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner, was in those days open only to the cars of members of the Royal Family.
I was sternly informed of this by the police when I tried to pioneer this sensible route 40 years ago.
As for clothing, the bug gear sported by famous cyclists such as radio and television presenter Jeremy Vine was unknown. I think this is important, as these special, stylized garments, which make the wearer anonymous and overconfident, play a big role in making cyclists go too fast. And once speed has become your goal, crosswalks are a huge nuisance.
My colleagues made fun of or made fun of my cycling. I remember a great writer of deeply conservative articles telling me that it was simply not adulting to get around the city on a bicycle. He should take taxis, like everyone else.
I have lived to see this attitude almost completely disappear, as more and more people see the virtues of a quiet, clean and healthy mode of transportation. But, unfortunately, things have not stopped there.
That is why it saddens me to think of another famous case of this kind, which has not yet been addressed by Parliament. In 2016, mother-of-two Kim Briggs was killed by a cyclist as she crossed the road in central London.
The bicycle was being used illegally because it did not have a front brake. The rider, Charlie Alliston, was acquitted of manslaughter but found guilty of a Victorian offense designed to deal with people who rode horses carelessly and caused bodily harm by “driving or racing wildly or furiously”. Alliston was jailed for 18 months.
Mrs Briggs’ widower, Matt, has responded very powerfully and justifiably to this by campaigning for a new offense of causing death or serious injury by riding a bicycle in a dangerous or careless manner.
Since his wife’s death, almost £6bn has been spent on cycling infrastructure – the cycling lobby’s response to the problem. But there is no such law yet.
This failure has convinced Mr Briggs that the government is afraid of cycling lobbyists. Maybe. I suspect it’s laziness plus a general desire to appear green at all costs.
But the situation is going to get worse, and if my fellow cyclists don’t want to end up like those in North Korea, forced to wear plates and be registered, they have to realize how angry they are making the rest of us, and even some of us. his traveling companions.
