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The Boomers’ Love of the Motor Car has Enslaved Us All. Autonomous Vehicles could free us.

The Automobile, as with all innovation is first conceived as a replacement for an existing technology. The Horseless Carriage. And at first, it did: the Motor car was the transport of the kind of people who had carriages and staff to drive them.

Then aristocratic youngsters got their hands on their parents’ cars and started to drive themselves. The Car became the aspirational badge of success.

By the 1960s anyone with a middle-class job could have a car. And by the 1980s cars were in the price range of more-or-less everyone.

The Baby-boomers dug up the 1930s cycleways as they built an environment around the motor car. Town centres were demolished, and rebuilt with inner ring-roads during the 60s and 70s. The bicycle was despised as a poor-man’s transport, or the toy of eccentrics, and so not really considered as an option. Nor were pedestrians, who were relegated to dank subterranean holes of rain-soaked concrete filled with ranting, smack-addled derelicts, begging for small change in puddles of cheap lager piss. Walking to the town centre from residential districts became unpleasant. Cycling was effectively banned. Real people who had to do things, drove cars.

Unfortunately, driving into a town or city centre was little better, however many urban expressways were built. Too many people wanted to take too many cars into too little space. So businesses moved out of the centre, to the urban edge, next to vast, windswept car-parks. The result is urban sprawl as suburbs without amenities forced people to travel beyond human distances. As car ownership expanded, the buses disappeared through lack of use, and kids lost their freedom. Town centres decayed through lack of use. Cycling became a terrifying ordeal of close-passes by tons of angry metal and walking to anything simply took too long.

The Boomers mostly do not go anywhere except by car, and cannot conceive of it being any other way, despite the fact they may have visited Copenhagen or Amsterdam. There are sufficient cars even there for these cities to not cause the Boomers cognitive dissonance.

The result of the world the boomers built is a world which will be utterly miserable for them as they decay into senescence. The boomers’ kids live a long way from them. As do their friends. There is no local shop. Once their eyesight goes and their kids take their car keys away, they will be marooned, day after day as the clock ticks away on their lives, trapped in their homes by the very world they built.

LOL @ the Boomers.

The Netherlands was going the same way in the 1970s, but thanks to a spate of children being killed by motor cars, they decided to change course and design all urban spaces around people, not cars. The result is residential neighbourhoods still have shops even coffin-dodgers can walk to, and thanks to a lifetime of practice, cloggy pensioners can do this:

It’s hard to imagine a british octogenarian mixing it with the lorries on a bicycle on the way to see his grandkids. Thankfully for the Netherlanders’ baby-boomers, unlike the UK’s, built a world that isn’t oppressively hostile to the elderly, something they are enjoying today.

The absurd british fear of the cyclist is something of a stockholm syndrome. Because it is fear. Deep-seated fear of someone who rejects all their society’s assumptions. Fear that their car, and their precious parking space will become worthless. Fear of the freedom, of the lack of regulation, and resentment of someone who is free* of the frustrations of traffic.

Hence the belief that cyclists are scofflaws, who pose a danger to pedestrians. Cyclists do pose a danger to pedestrians. But it is dwarfed by that involving cars. There were no deaths caused by cyclists in the UK between the collision between Kim Briggs and Charlie Alliston, and his conviction and imprisonment for wanton and furious cycling. Of course, had Kim Briggs stepped back into the path of a car doing 12-18 mph, and died, it wouldn’t have made local news, and there wouldn’t have been an arrest, let alone a conviction. There were dozens of incidents where a car killed a person in those 18 months, and the drivers mostly went unpunished; these are near-daily events. Cyclist hurting pedestrians happen in the UK at a perfect frequency: scarce enough to be remarkable, but frequent enough for recall. Availability heuristics reinforce a belief that cyclists are inherently reckless and dangerous.

This is why all the demands of the motoring lobby are to impose all the same frustrations endured by motorists, entirely unnecessarily, onto cyclists. Licensing, testing, taxing and compulsory insurance. Compulsory high visibility clothing, helmets and demands to follow the same, unnecessary and counterproductive rules.

These frustrations do not occur to citizens of Northern Europe, where cycling is natural, comfortable and universal. It’s not the weather: the Netherlands is every bit as dank, windy and wet as the UK. It’s not hills: Germany and Scandinavia are not any less hilly than the UK. It’s that the pedestrian, bicycle and motorcar are considered as different, but equal in the design of roads and urban spaces. Road engineers design out the conflicts and frustrations to both cyclists and motorists by keeping the two parties apart where possible. The netherlands isn’t anti-car, but it is pro-cyclist. I’ve driven in Sweden. It’s far, far more pleasant than doing so in the UK. Why? Because anyone who wants to cycle their journey, can. As a result, there’s less congestion, and parking is easy. Cycling and driving in Northern Europe is, of course vastly more pleasant than it is in the UK. It isn’t a zero-sum game.

Thankfully, there’s a solution: driverless cars, as you can tell by the name, are conceived as a replacement for the car, except you can read a book while being driven by a robot chauffeur, exactly analogous to the attitude of the early car owners to their horseless carriages. But they will not be a pari-passu replacement. People won’t have their driverless car sitting outside their houses, the passenger footwell full of empty twix wrappers, because autonomous vehicles will, at least initially, be very expensive. Instead of spending 95% of their time stationary, they will be collectively owned. Smartphone technology will allow people to summon a taxi appropriate to any journey from a pool of vehicles. Uber treats its drivers so dismissively because they are openly planning for the day they can dismiss all their drivers. Because people hiring such a vehicle will pay the full, rather than the marginal cost, at the time of the journey, of each journey, the incentive to not call the taxi, and walk or cycle will be greater. Because the cost of such a journey will be lower because you’re not paying a driver, there may be more such journeys. Fewer incompetent drivers will reduce both the subjective and objective risk of cycling. Time becomes less important, as people can work or read or relax, so commutes may become longer. How these competing pressures resolve themselves will be fascinating to watch.

Autonomous technology could therefore result in the car becoming the servant of humanity, rather than its master. Transport should be about facilitating people coming together, allowing people to move at the human scale, where possible, not privileging one form of transport over all the others, as now. The driverless car could allow the bicycle, the car and the pedestrian to get on, as multiple clubs in a golf-bag full of ways to get about, as they do rather well in the Netherlands, rather than competing angrily as they do here.

In the meantime, let’s just build some cycle roads and safe urban infrastructure for people on foot, and on bicycles. Everyone will benefit. Especially the boomers whose mistakes have caused us all so much misery.

*Almost all cyclists in the UK also own a car. It’s just we choose to not use it sometimes.

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Obesity and the Daily Mail

The Daily Mail’s editor may or may not have been exhorted to “give them something to hate every day” by its proprietor, Lord Northcliffe, but today, the subject of the hate is fat people. Apparently 12,000 people are on disability benefit because of “metabolic disease”, which the daily mail has taken as a proxy for “too fat to work” despite the fact not all the cases of diabetes will be due to blubber.

In a population of 70,000,000, 12,000 people is less than 0.02%. This really isn’t very many, and some of whom will be ill without being fat. Obesity costs the NHS £9bn a year? I doubt that too. I suspect the Mail has just asked what heart disease, Diabetes and so forth costs the NHS and assumed that’s all Obesity. In any case, in an NHS budget of £115bn, this too isn’t that big a number. But the fat, like smokers die younger, costing the country less in pensions and die quicker, meaning they cost less the NHS less than a healthy person in their final years.

Having lied with statistics and asked the readers to blame the deficit and the breakdown of the NHS on salad-dodgers, we are then asked to blame the food industry. A nice, simple daily mail morality tale. Wicked businesses, allied to weak, stupid, gluttunous fat people (defined as ‘people fatter than you’) are costing YOU money. If only THEY could be made to behave, the problem would go away. Having waded through the article, I suspect most readers have got a very inaccurate impression as to the actual size of the problem of people who’re “too fat to work”, and the root causes of obesity.

The problem is obesity is not about sugary drinks or high calorie ready meals, or fast food. It’s about a vast number of factors, most of which are not yet fully understood. Obesity has a genetic component. Some people have a greater propensity to put down fat than others. It has an environmental component: it’s easier to eat healthily if you live in a relatively affluent area. Poor kids are less likely to have access to safe outdoor play. It has a life-style component. Active people don’t tend to get fat.

But ultimately the problem is a combination of readily available high calorie food, and jobs that don’t burn it off. We all have the appetite of a hunter-gatherer who roams miles in search of food, but we sit behind desks. Our jobs are stressful, which raises cortisol levels. Driving is stressful too. Yet our bodies do not get to make the “fight or flight” for which they are prepared, and instead lay down fat. And as our jobs get ever more sedentary, and ever more labour-saving devices are employed in the home, we will burn ever fewer calories as we move about.

There is a moral component to getting fat. It is possible to look in the mirror and say “I’m getting fat, and I must do something about it”. But if you’re fat as a 10 year-old, it’s really not your fault. All studies show losing weight, and keeping it off is hard-to-impossible without lifestyle changes. Raising your activity levels isn’t easy either. Having got fat, ‘going for a run’ puts an intolerable burden on knees and backs. Thighs will rub together and bleed. The extra activity needed to burn off the blubber is simply agony for the obese. ‘Take daily exercise’ isn’t that simple.

It seems that at some point in development, your body decides how much fat it wants to carry, and this happens quite young. Most people get steadily fatter as they get older, and research suggests a bit of middle-aged spread isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s certainly better than being underweight. What matters far more than Body Mass Index is how active you are. People who take regular, moderate exercise are much, much healthier than those who don’t, even if they carry a few extra pounds.

This is why active transport – cycling and walking is so important. It will allow an increase in activity, without requiring the willpower to “go for a run”. A bicycle is a labour saving device, relative to walking, and in any sensible society, should be the first choice of transport for journeys under a couple of miles. But as Daily Mail readers are viciously opposed to bicycles, as the transport of people they don’t understand, the one thing that might reduce obesity will not be supported.

So the Daily Mail plays its vicious little morality play, feeding idiots’ righteous indignation by lying with statistics, in order to fuel animus against THEM. All the while, being a significant part of the problem itself. The Daily Mail is a hateful little rag, which leaves its readers a little less informed, every single day.

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Bicycle Helmet Compulsion

Whatever internet libertarians think, car use has externalities, and bicycle use doesn’t. So it is a reasonable goal of Government to facilitate cycling especially for short journeys. Standing in the way of more people jumping on their bikes for short journeys (anything less than a mile, is usually quicker by bicycle than by car…), is the vexed issue of safety. The superficially obvious sticking plaster solution so beloved of nanny-stater is to ignore the crap road design and poor infrastructure for cyclists; turn a blind-eye to appalling motorist behaviour and attitudes and compel cyclists to wear helmets and high-visibility clothing, as if that would make a difference.

The evidence is clear. In New Zealand and Australia, compelling people to use cycle helmets did decrease cycling related head injuries, by about the same amount they reduced total cycling miles. So given positive externalities of substituting bicycle journeys for car journeys, society is poorer. Individuals are poorer too, since the evidence is clear that (for adults at least) cycling, even without a helmet, saves more people from heart disease than it kills under the wheels of motor-vehicles. Given there is some “safety in numbers” for cyclists, reducing the number of cyclists makes any given journey more dangerous for the cyclists that remain.

Even the motorist is worse off if there are fewer cyclists:  if short car journeys are substituted with Bicycle journeys: There’s less congestion, especially around school run time, There’s less competition for parking spaces, and given most congestion is in the queue at the lights, journey times fall.

The solution is to make the bicycle safe, and that means separating it from all but the slowest moving traffic, and where volumes of pedestrians and/or cyclists are high enough, cyclists should be separated from pedestrian traffic too. Unfortunately most infrastructure in the UK is tailor-made to create conflict. Most roads are too narrow for cars to pass cyclists safely, so frustrating (apparent – waiting behind a cyclist on an open road almost never delays a journey, you just catch up with the car in front a little later) delays are caused by cyclists on open roads, or the motorist is tempted into a dangerous and uncomfortable close passes. Most “cycle paths” are shared-use, and pedestrians do not often keep to “their” side of the path, leading to frustration and (apparent – cyclists whizzing past pedestrians are no-where near as dangerous as it appears to the pedestrian) danger.

Many idiots think cyclists are a significant danger to pedestrians. “One nearly knocked me over…” This is risible tospottery spouted mainly by the kind of contemptible wanker who thinks UKIP isn’t a bunch of contemptible wankers.

The key is to get more people cycling, creating a virtuous circle where cycling infrastructure generates cyclists. This encourages councils to build more, which encourages more cyclists and so on. Everyone gets used to having cyclists about. Everyone is better off. There’s less noise, congestion, stress, and people are healthier and better-looking. Forget gastric bands, prescribe cycling on the NHS for being a disgusting land-whale.

What helmet laws do, however, is put out the message that cycling is DANGEROUS. Parents don’t let their kids do something that’s so dangerous the Government has made protective equipment mandatory. Instead, kids are cocooned in a steel cage, until they get their own at 17. Secondly by criminalising occasional cyclists who just want to pop to the shops and don’t have a cycle helmet, they never get on their bikes and so jump on the car. It also discourages short, urban journeys.

The reality is simple. Plastic hats aren’t much cop in a serious collision. In any given crash, a Bicycle helmet helps in around 16% of cases (more in children, who have more low-speed, sideways tumbles, for which the design of cycle helmets is optimised. Because of the very specific tests helmets are subjet to, their benefit is greater at low speeds, and especially off road. But there is a flip-side: it is probable that bicycle helmets increase the likelihood of getting into a crash – both the motorist and cyclist engage in risk-compensating behaviour. Cyclists take more risks and go faster, motorists pass closer to helmeted cyclists. Even the fact that the helmets are bulky increases the risk of a collision.

The more upright the bike, the less you need a helmet. The sportier and faster your bike, and the rougher the terrain, the more you need a helmet. Think about what happens in a front wheel skid at speed at the bottom of a hill on a “dutch bike” with a basket, compared to a racing bicycle where the rider’s weight is significantly borne by the hands. The latter ends up with the cyclist falling head first. The former lands on their feet.

Most of the assertions and statistics made in this post are peer reviewed, and can be found here.

In summary, There is little benefit to helmet use in urban utility cycling. In a collision with a motor-vehicle, a helmet is next-to-useless. In a crash not involving a motor vehicle helmets sometimes help. If you’re likely to have the former, helmets don’t matter, and the latter they might. It really should be up to the cyclist.

Helmets may help prevent injury, especially minor injury, in any given crash, but may, in some circumstances make serious crashes with motor vehicles (where helmets are not efficacious) more likely. The main effect of bicycle helmet compulsion, is fewer cyclists, an effect which dwarfs any other safety effect of such legislation. Encourage the use of cycle helmets, at least until the UK cycle infrastructure looks like the Netherlands’, by all means, but don’t pass a law making it compulsory. To compel helmet use is the single biggest thing a government can do to put back the cause of utility cycling.

If you want a take home you can tweet, here it is: If your bum is higher than your hands, wear a helmet, it might help in some crashes, but helmet law mainly reduces the number of cyclists.

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The Tour De France in Essex

Yesterday, the world’s biggest sporting event (live audience measured in Millions… there’s nothing else that comes close) travelled through Cambridgeshire, Essex and into London through the rolling countryside that the Tour organisers call “flat” but actually sap strength with lots of short, punchy little climbs that tempt you into going anaerobic to keep your speed up and which eventually cause you to ‘bonk’, especially if you forget, as I did, to eat.

I set off from home just before 8, arriving in Finchingfield at about 11.15, just as the tour procession was about to go through, scattering bits of merchandising. I reckon there were 20,000 people in Finchingfield alone. Apparently Saffron Walden was packed to the rafters and the roads were lined with people. Everyone who owed a bike within 20 miles of the course had cycled to the route, and many thousands more had driven, the lanes were lined with cars for miles around. All I wanted was a coke, because I’d ridden 42 miles, I had an empty water bottle and no food, and needed some sugar. My bike and I got separated as the procession came through, and I watched helplessly as the floats squeezed past it. Thankfully, despite it being on the course, leant up against the railings, it wasn’t confiscated or crushed by a frenchman driving a float cart. I recovered it, and set about finding somewhere to watch the race, Jersey pockets bulging with haribo and coca cola.

I very kind Farmer had put a trailer next to the route, and when I asked whether I could join them on it, I was asked whether I wanted a beer. Talk about landing on one’s feet! A hot dog was subsequently thrust into my grateful hands and the only payment was to pass on my far-from-exhaustive knowledge of cycle-racing.

You can see my trusty steed, and the gang with whom I watched the race.

What’s remarkable is the length of the procession, there are cars and motorbikes passing through for a good hour before the first cyclists arrive, in this instance Jan Barta for NetApp Endura (in blue) and Jean-Marc Bideau of the Bretangne team (in white), who were around 4 minutes ahead of the peloton at this stage.

 Once they were through, there were a couple of service cars behind them, then another wait for the Peloton. Blink and you miss them. Then there’s the convoy of team vehicles, service vehicles and so forth, and a few groups of cyclists who’re drafting them to get back into the peloton following a comfort break.

Once they’re gone, it’s time to pack up and head home, after a stop in a pub to have a bite to eat and a few beers, and watch the rest of the race. I’d like to thank Miles and Stuart a couple of Enfield CC lads who then took it upon themselves to drag me me to Bruntingfield (halfway home for me, the location of their car) far, far quicker than I could have done it myself. It’s odd, pace-lining (OK, wheelsucking) on a fully-dressed touring bike. I descended quickly, but struggled as soon as the hill went uppy. I’d like to blame the weight, but also being a fat knacker didn’t help! 

Once they’d departed, I faced a long, lonely 20 miles or so in the rain, completely forgetting to eat, I started bonking with about 10 miles to go. I arrived home at around 7 o’clock. I sat in the bath eating a sausage roll and haribo. All in all a great day in the saddle, and amazing atmosphere around the course. If the Tour comes back to the UK, and I am sure it will, I highly recommend going to see it.

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See Bike think Horse & the ASA.

To The Advertising Standards Authority. (mattw@asa.org.uk)

Reference your ruling A13-238570 on the Cycle Scotland – see bike, think horse advert.

The basis of your ruling is wrong. Cycle helmets have little effect in open traffic as they are not designed to deal with the kind of impacts associated with collisions between motor vehicles and cyclists, nor are they a legal requirement. Cycle helmets are negatively associated with safety, due to the “risk compensation” effect. In countries where cycling is a mass means of transport, they are only seen on sport cyclists. At best they are a placebo, giving cyclists a feeling of safety in incredibly hostile roads.

Secondly, riding 0.5m from the kerb is often considerably more dangerous than “taking the lane” or as you put it “in the centre of the lane”. You were concerned the cyclist was more than 0.5m from the kerb, thus the “car almost had to enter the right lane of traffic”. Of course it did. That’s the point of primary position, to ensure the driver only overtakes when it’s safe.

At a stroke, you’ve reinforced the message prevalent in the minds of some motorists that cyclists have an obligation to get out of their way. The rules are clear on this: Cyclists may use the whole road if necessary, and the decision is the cyclist’s, not the motorists. This message needs reinforcing, not contradicting.

This ruling is utterly irresponsible, dangerous and contrary to the spirit and letter of the highway rules. Cyclists die due to the attitude displayed by your ruling.

You need to re-consider. I will be writing to my MP about this.

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It isn’t about cyclist behaviour.

Whenever a cyclist dies, and there have been 5 deaths in London in the past 10 days, there’s always a chorus of voices saying “yes, but they run red lights”. The word “They” is always a handy combat indicator of sloppy thinking. When you lump everyone who shares a characteristic, in this case people who use bicycles, together, you’re rarely expressing much more than brute prejudice.

I’ve explained in some detail why cyclists generate such ire in some drivers. But it’s the term “cyclist” which is problematic. There are many people on bikes. Few would self describe as “cyclists”, any more than most people  driving cars would consider themselves “motorists” or even “drivers”. They’re just people listening to the radio while they get to work.

There are many tribes of cyclist. Just as there are many tribes of car-driver. Just as not everyone in a car is the kind of sub-human who chooses to drive a BMW twat-panzer right up your trumpet, not everyone on a bike is Lucas Brunelle.



Ignorning cycle lanes – The people who died in London seem to be disproportionately female, young, and they’re being killed in the bike lane, usually by large, left-turning vehicles. The dead cyclists aren’t by and large running red lights, over pedestrians, and into traffic. Those people aren’t the ones being killed. I can’t repeat that enough. The cyclists being killed are the ones behaving as the pedestrian and motorist think they ought. Cyclists are dying, not because they are taking risks, but because the infrastructure, such as it is, is badly designed and putting people in conflict with vehicles. The “filter lanes” at many junctions for example put cyclists on the left of left-turning lorries with tragic results. Many “cycle lanes” are full of parked cars which require a cyclist to repeatedly enter a stream of traffic. Each manoeuvre is a source of conflict. Many more cycle lanes take a cyclist into the “door-zone”.

The experienced “lycra lout” is well out of the way of these hazards by ignoring the “perfectly good cycle lane” and instead can be found “riding down the middle of the road”, a position known as “primary” to cyclists but “in my way” to motorists. Cyclists have a right to use the road, do not have to use a cycle lane, especially when it’s unsafe to use it. Motorists have no right to pass, nor do cyclists have an obligation to let them. It is unlikely in London, any delay can be attributed to a cyclist as the motorist will only overtake to the back of the next queue. Motorists should understand a cycle lane you can park in or drive into, isn’t a cycle lane at all.


Pavement riding – is anti-social. But anyone riding a bicycle on a pavement is almost by definition not a cyclist. They are people scared off the roads by vehicles. It is not something anyone self-describing as a cyclist would do. While I don’t cycle on pavements, I understand why some feel they have little choice. Roads are scary, cycle lanes inadequate and councils do cycle infrastructure on the cheap with “shared use” paths bringing cyclists and pedestrains into conflict. Whatever the prevalence of this problem, the risk to pedestrians is so grotesquely over-stated by anti-cycling dick-heads as to be ridiculous. The solution to pavement riding is to make the roads safe-enough so that the people who currently ride on the pavement feels safe enough to get back where (s)he belongs.

Smug and Self-Righteous, thinking they own the road – This is a staple of the journalistic cycle-hate piece. Apparently we’re “smug” and “self-righteous” for pointing out that the more confident and aggressive a cyclist is, the safer he is. Being meekly tucked up on the left, in the gutter, where the motorist wants us is by far the most dangerous place. It’s not “smug” or “self-righteous” to demand better behaviour from people who pose a mortal threat to me. The fact remains that a motorist annoyed by a cyclist “in the way” has at least seen me, and if his irritation stems from an inability to pass, then he’s not attempting a dangerous pass, so I am safer. Were I “out the way” in the gutter, amongst the potholes and broken glass, that motorist might be tempted to squeeze through, with potentially fatal results. Don’t blame the cyclist for doing what is necessary to stay alive. Blame the road engineer for building in conflict.

Red Light Jumping – yes. I occasionally run the red light. Generally when the pedestrians have gone, I go before the traffic to get a head start. If there are no pedestrians, I’ll judiciously roll over, if it is safe to do so. At large, complex junctions, or ones with multiple traffic phases, I’ll wait. Basically, I regard Red lights as advisory. I don’t care two hoots about “the law” which comes a distant second to my safety. Where the infrastructure is good, and the design clear, I’ll obey the rules. Where the infrastructure has been designed without thought to my safety or comfort, I’ll make my own way, thanks. It’s not as if motorists don’t break the rules. “Amber Gambling” is red-light jumping by another name, and everyone does it. Speed limits are not (to put it mildly) rigorously observed. I’ll obey every red light, when every car overtaking me slows down and passes with at least 1-2m. The fact is jumping a red light is nowhere near as dangerous to the cyclist as it appears to the motorist. I’ll say again, the red-light jumping lycra-nazi is NOT the cyclist dying on London’s roads. Feel like making a comment here? I’m not interested in your anecdotes about “a cyclist you saw…”. Any such comments will be deleted.

They wear black/don’t use lights – riding without lights after dark is illegal and rightly so. But any requirement on cyclists to wear high-viz clothing must be resisted, for the same reasons as mandatory helmets must be resisted. Demanding cyclists wear unsightly high-viz clothing denormalises cycling and makes cyclists an outgroup. Some motorists don’t see a person on a bike, but a “cyclist” and are tempted to “punish” that member of the out-group for the perceived transgression of another with a close pass. People should be able to cycle in normal clothes as they do on much of the continent which will improve motorist behaviour. There is evidence that cyclists (especially female cyclists) on upright bikes, dressed in street clothes and without helmets are treated better by motorists probably for this subliminal reason.

They think they’re saving the world – This is just pure projection. I’ve never met a cyclist for whom environmental concerns outweigh the financial, health and fun (yes, most of us ENJOY cycling to work) elements of cycling. It’s undeniable though. A cyclist isn’t contributing to road wear, pollution, congestion, noise or taking up much parking space. A town in which there are lots of cyclists, and few cars is happier, healthier, wealthier, and simply a nicer place to be. Houses next to an upgraded bicycle lane rise in value, those next to an upgraded road, fall. Bicycles are undeniably better urban vehicles than cars.

I am sure there are some cyclists killed will have in some way, through recklessness or intoxication contributed to the situation in which they died. But they will be a small minority, and certainly far fewer than incidents where motorist recklessness, aggression or intoxication contributed to the fatality. Most of these people would have been calmly riding to or from work, and simply been crushed by a big vehicle as they meekly took what they thought was supposed to be a “cycle superhighway”. The road shouldn’t guide people into lethal road positioning. Inexperience shouldn’t be lethal. Addressing driver inattention or misbehaviour and poorly designed roads are whole orders of magnitude more important in saving cyclists lives than addressing cyclist misbehaviour, a problem which exist mainly in the minds of angry, stressed motorists.

Yet every death ends up with a debate with motorists about red-light jumping; mere ‘whataboutery’ to deflect debate away from the elephants in the room – rubbish infrastructure and the attitudes of some drivers. Even more disappointing to hear Boris Johnson give air time to the trope that it’s beholden upon cyclists to obey the rules, when in many cases, it’s the rules that’s killing them. The fact remains the consequences of bad behaviour in 2 tons of steel capable of 100mph is vastly greater than the consequences of bad behaviour on 15lbs of steel at 30mph. There is no moral equivalence between cyclist’s bad behaviour and motorists bad behaviour, because the former is largely borne by the perpetrator, whereas the consequences of the latter are not borne by the motorist.

Proper infrastructure, which does involve taking space away from the motor vehicle, will make cyclists safer, and reduce conflict to everyone’s benefit. 25% of rush-hour traffic in some areas of London is now bicycles. By numbers alone, cyclists now deserve proper safe infrastructure.

Update: As I wrote this, a further cyclist has been killed in London, bringing the total to 6 in 11 days.

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Top Trolling from Rod LIddle in the Spectator.

Off yer bikes! Cyclists are a menace to society — and self-righteous to boot 


You are just pedalling, you plastic-hatted ninnies, not saving the bloody planet 

 Rather than the invisible cyclist, who’s American, perhaps fat, out-of-shape, double-chinned Labour party member, Rod Liddle could have started his Spectator rant with an article about why stupid, working class, labour-voting ignorant chavs cannot control themselves around cyclists, written by someone who lives in the UK and who knows what they’re talking about. Like this one, by me. Instead he finds a pretty harmless piece of hyperbole from a San-Fransico Blogger to start with.

‘Such anti-cyclist anger reminds me in many ways of the feelings about gypsies that I would hear expressed when I lived in central Europe. In Hungary, people would tell me they disliked gypsies because they were lazy and dishonest. The truth was that gypsies — like, I would suggest, cyclists — were unpopular principally for being different.

So he starts with a cyclist complaining that others treat them (us) as an outgroup. Liddle Then moves on to a classic piece of trolling – nice and controversial treating cyclists as an outgroup:

Like many people, I am worried that too few cyclists are being killed on our roads each year.

Q.E.D. Can you imagine being able to write that in the Spectator about any other group of people? Premiership footballers perhaps.

While the number of cycling journeys undertaken in the UK has risen enormously since 2006, and exponentially since the exciting, hirsute Sir Bradley Wiggins won a bicycle race in France in 2012, the official statistics show only a moderate rise in fatalities.

The first error of fact. Wiggins’ win in the Tour De France came long after the number of cyclists started to rise.

This suggests to me that car drivers have become more accommodating in their behaviour towards these people and have lost their radical anti-cycling zeal.

This is a good thing. No-one is bothered by black neighbours any more either. The only people who still hate cyclists are stupid, ignorant, working class, labour-voters mostly in white vans, who hate anyone different. Hate. It’s a bad thing, Rod.

They have been bullied out of it, one suspects, by official propaganda that insists that knocking cyclists over, deliberately or otherwise, is somehow ‘antisocial’, and by the effusions of lionised celebrity cyclists like Wiggins, and that also ennobled Scottish man who cycles round and round a track very quickly indeed, like a sort of thin-lipped ginger hamster with outsized calf muscles.

Propaganda?

Wiggins and the Scottish man are both militant campaigners against the killing of cyclists, and they are also in favour of more cycle lanes (which cyclists like to see built, but never use)…

To understand why few cyclists use the laughable provisions in the UK, see the excellent Warrington cycle campaign’s facility of the month.

…and further speed restrictions on the people who actually pay for the roads (car drivers), but the government is on board too.

Of course car-drivers don’t “pay for the roads”. Most cyclists also own a car, and indeed are more likely to do so than the average member of the public. Cyclists are drawn from two populations: those too poor to own a car, but these are now outnumbered by affluent people for whom cycling is an enjoyable way to get to work. Of course Rod Liddle, being a member of the Labour party, is not concerned with tiresome research, or so-called “facts”.

My concern is that if killing cyclists is no longer allowable in a free country, then it is the thin end of the wedge and it may be that down the line cycling will become an ‘acceptable’ pursuit for normal people. We have seen this happen before with homosexuals, single mothers and some foreigners; one moment we are enjoined not to victimise them, the next they are clamouring for equality. Somewhere, surely, we have to draw the line.

OK he’s trolling. Good work.

Well, ok, I jest, in predictably bad taste. And you were probably aware that I was joking, unless you are a committed cyclist who is determined to be outraged. By ‘committed’ I do not mean that you are the recipient of state protection in a secure asylum….

Thanks for admitting you’re joking. But what… there’s more to this article?

…but rather that you are one of those people with an expensive bicycle, a lot of Lycra, a pompous little pointy plastic hat, hilarious goggles, a fatuous water bottle and the fervent conviction that you are a Victim as a consequence of your Vulnerability. And that in being a Victim as a consequence of being Vulnerable you are somehow empowered to take it out on everybody else you see on the public highways, especially car drivers and pedestrians.

Oh, so having said you’re joking, you then start with the SERIOUS BIT? About how we’re all so insufferable for not wanting to get crushed by a fucking truck? Or for expecting drivers to respect our safety? Is that what you’re saying Rod?

There is nothing quite like considering yourself a Victim to bolster the self-esteem, nothing like resentment to make the hours go by a little quicker. Not all cyclists fall into this category of course, far from it. But plenty do. Dare to disparage the cycling fraternity and all hell will break loose; when you are a certified Victim all sense of proportion — and humour — departs.

Well forgive me for not wanting to be crushed by a truck.

I discovered this when I mentioned in a blog recently that I was not sure why I had to pay, through my taxes, for my friend to have a new bicycle — there’s a government scheme on offer which effectively gives you a bike on tick, interest-free.

No there isn’t, Rod. There’s a scheme which lets some people (but not soldiers or the self-employed) to buy a bicycle out of pre-tax income via their employers. It saves at most £400.

Ooh, the fury. But it was nothing compared to the opprobrium heaped upon the head of my colleague Matthew Parris who jokingly suggested that life in his village would be improved by piano wire strung across the roads to decapitate the hugely annoying cyclists.

But this has actually happened. And so some of us don’t think it funny.

Cyclists — or some of them, a lot of them — have become, these last few years, full of themselves, puffed-up with righteous anger. Part of this has been encouraged by the success of Wiggins and the Scottish hamster-man. But part of it too is because these people don’t think they’re simply pedalling from High Holborn to Paddington; they think they’re saving the bloody planet.

This is a charge often levelled, but it’s a straw man. Most people cycling from High Holborn to Paddington (a route containing some of the best infrastructure in London, incidentally) will do so because it’s cheap, healthy, fun, sociable and pleasant way to travel. Few cyclists think they’re “saving the planet”. And if some do, so what?

And they think that the rest of us are destroying it. As the anonymous blogger put it in that quote at the top of the page, they think that they are different.

No we don’t think we’re different, the blogger you quote doesn’t think cyclists are different. But you clearly think we are different, don’t you Rod? You’re projecting your own prejudices.

No — you’re not. You just can’t afford a car or are deluded about the impact cycling a few miles makes to the environment. And you can’t be bothered to walk.

Interesting how Labour members think they’re allowed to sneer at the poor. Of course even Jeremy Clarkson admits a city without cars littering the place is simply a nicer place to be. Cars do ruin the environment. It’s not just about Carbon. It’s why we pedestrianise streets. Because cars scare people away.

Cyclists are another one of those things about which the government and establishment are of one mind and the general public another. There is absolutely no doubt that the behaviour of some cyclists, the militant lot, enrages both pedestrians and car users — i.e. the vast majority of the British public.

The militant cyclist is unlikely to be the same person as the pavement cyclist, who’s much more likely to be from the tribe openly sneered at by Liddle – too poor to own a car.

I had always thought, when I saw two cyclists riding abreast on a narrowish road, holding up the traffic, that they were unaware of the annoyance they were causing. That maybe they didn’t know there was a car behind, and another 50 cars behind that car.

If it’s not safe to pass two cyclists, it’s not safe to pass one cyclist. There’s no extra delay.

Oh, but they do, they do. Check out the cycling websites and you will learn that they ride two abreast precisely to stop cars overtaking them, because on narrow roads they are convinced that car drivers will cut in too close to them as they pass.

Convinced, because IT HAPPENS.

So they block the entire road and feel good about it, because they are Victims. The law states that they are allowed to ride two abreast

…on any road, not just…

…on a big, wide, straight road, no bends and curves, where there is plenty of opportunity and width for cars to pass by in comfort; but a hefty majority of the posts I saw on several websites revealed very different strategies. Their view is that unless a car has room to pass two cyclists, it shouldn’t be trying to pass one. And with that they wrap themselves in self-righteousness as the queues of traffic tail back further and further.

There is no right for you to get past at will, and no obligation on cyclists to “get out of the way”. That you, a fat, slovenly, Labour voter is so filled with a massive entitlement complex that you think you have a right to get past, just shows how fat, stupid and selfish you are. Your 30 second delay (and it really is just that) is more important to you, than another human being’s safety. Which is just fucking grotesque when you think about it.

Likewise, riding on the pavements and thus maiming pensioners. The law is clear about this, for a change. They should never do it.

And if you go to “cycling websites” you’ll find the “militant cyclists” pretty universal in their condemnation of pavement cyclist, but never let the facts get in the way of a good rant, Rod.

But they do it because they feel safer there, of course.

Most pavement cyclists are poor people trying to get about. They feel threatened on the road. Because you think you have a right to get past.

Listen, you plastic-hatted ninny: if you don’t have the balls to cycle in the road, then ditch the bike.

Most pavement cyclist don’t wear helmets. Unless they’re small children. Who ARE allowed to cycle on the pavement. Facts, Rod. They’re out there if you look….

It is still the case that, mile for mile, pedestrians are far more ‘vulnerable’ than cyclists. Mile for mile, more pedestrians are killed. They — we — are the real victims, even if we do not whine about it continuously.

Yes, Rod, they’re killed by motorists, not cyclists.

And the number of pedestrians maimed by cyclists is also rising by the year, to the extent that legislation has been proposed to ensure that cyclists respect the laws of the land the same as everyone else.

The grotesque exaggeration of the number of pedestrians hurt by cyclists is a tiresome trope of this sort of piece. How many people are hurt by cars, and how many by cyclists, Rod?…Rod?

And of course, there are other irritations and dangers. I get infuriated by the cyclists tearing past me on the rural footpath where I live, scattering dogs and kids like confetti, believing that because they are allowed on the path, they are under no obligation to consider anyone else who might be using it.

This happens occasionally. But equally frequently, the ‘shared use’ path has pedestrians wandering about on the bit set aside for cyclists. Who’s to blame? The council for engineering conflict.

I am thinking of training my dog to attack cyclists who behave like this, catch up with them on the uphill stretch and chew their tyres off. I think I will use, as a signal to the animal to launch its attack, the word ‘Hoy!’

Funny, using the name of the cyclist whom you pretend to not remember. Well done, you fat, Labour-voting twat.

And of course there is the running of red lights, a continual complaint from car users, and the weaving in and out of traffic with an expression of rectitude on their faces.

It had to come. The “red-light” crap. Car drivers too regularly run red lights. At least as frequently as cyclists. It’s just for reasons that are obvious, only one motorist will see a motorist do so, whereas dozens of motorists will see a cyclist run a light. It happens. But cyclists running the occasional red is simply not a big problem. Cars doing so is.

And while it is true that by far the greatest number of pedestrian injuries and deaths are caused by car drivers…

…Nice of you to admit it…

…as a pedestrian you always have the sneaking suspicion that, in general, car drivers will try their best to avoid hitting you, while cyclists not only don’t care but will happily blame you for any injury which occurs.

“Sneaking suspicion” of nothing except Rod Liddle’s brute prejudice. A straw man, ideas put into the heads of cyclists (THEM!) whom he has not bothered to consult.

It is the last point which is the crucial one. It is about attitude.

Yes it is, Rod. If you see a cyclist and think, “I’ll slow down, pass when it’s safe, I’ll probably not be delayed at all”, then you won’t feel the hate. Calm down, Rod. You’re fat and out-of-shape. Your heart might not take the stress.

For a long time car drivers have had it drummed into them that what they are doing is antisocial and undesirable and have been subjected to ever greater strictures about what they can and can’t do in their cars, how fast they should travel and why they should leave the car in the garage to ease congestion and save the planet.

Well, Rod, it’s not cyclists causing congestion is it? And you think people should be allowed to go as fast as they like, or abandon their vehicles wherever they choose? These “strictures” aren’t for the cyclists’ benefit, but for pedestrians. And motorists.

As a consequence, they have become mindful and cowed. By contrast the cyclists have been told that they are doing a Good Thing, that it would be better if we all cycled (it wouldn’t — it would be better if we all walked) and so believe they can do no wrong.

Simply not true. This is a mere projection of Rod’s own feelings of impotence when stuck in traffic. Traffic of course being created by other fat people like him in cars.

They have the moral high ground, which includes the pavement, since you asked.

I’ve dealt with the Pavement issue.

I think we need a bit of legislation to sort them out, to penalise adult cyclists who ride on pavements, to book them for dangerous driving when they’re cutting lights or riding two abreast on unsuitable roads. And either to make it compulsory for cyclists to use cycle lanes or for local authorities to stop providing them (and turn the existing ones back into normal roads). Then the cyclists will feel an even greater sense of victimhood, and thus be happier.

Or maybe, just maybe, proper, segregated infrastructure will encourage those people who want to cycle to do so without enraging fat, idle, Labour-voting inadequates as the fat about in their fat-mobiles, and indeed making their lipid lives a little easier. More, better cycle lanes will engineer out the conflict. But that would involve giving “THEM” (a word which along with “They”) appears 71 times in Rod Liddle’s article) what they want, and that would not appease Rod “fat labour” Liddle’s sense of victim-hood which flows through this article. The word “They” usually indicates a lack of thought, a generalisation about another group, and such generalisations rarely stand up to scrutiny.

This is an embarrassment to the Spectator, riven with ignorance of the subject and full of internal contradictions.

Did I mention Rod Liddle is a fat member of the Labour Party?

Update: Before you comment, be sure to check your “thoughts” against this Cyclist-hate Bingo card. I want to collect the lot:

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Speeding and the Abuse of Statistics

Yesterday, I attended a speed awareness course. I was caught at 35 in a 30 zone (in my defence I was decelerating  and it was a genuine mistake). I was given the option of a £95 course instead of £60 and 3 points.

During the course, the instructor, a knowledgeable but catastrophically monotone former traffic cop asserted that the re offending rate for the speed course is better than that of the points and a fine. My inner stat geek started screaming: SELF-SELECTING SAMPLE. People offered the course have

  1. not offended in the three years previously
  2. been caught a small amount over the speed-limit
  3. be prepared to spend extra to avoid points therefore probably wealthier
  4. be willing to spend half a day taking the course.
All of these things suggest speed awareness courses are being given to people who already respect the rules of the road, and if the conversations with my fellow “delegates” (ffs) was representative, all were first-time offenders who reckoned their speeding was an error of judgement, not habitual. There were no “boy-racers”, and the only person undermining the instructor was me, because I am a contrary bastard and I don’t like the police and he didn’t appear to know the law surrounding cyclists very well.
Above all, I feel genuine stress when I see people abusing statistics. This seems only obvious to me. Is it?
Abuse of stats is a problem: People working in a business where success is measured by stats: speed-camera partnerships and associated road-safety wallahs are a good example, will use statistics to “prove” whatever they do is working. Without the cold, hard measure of cash, the temptation to abuse stats is enormous. People look for information confirming their biases. In this case that the course an instructor delivers, works as intended suits the interests of the people who work for AA Drivetech. The record of speed cameras in saving lives almost dissapears for example when you consider reversion to the mean. Thus we have a deeply unpopular policy sold on the basis of safety, yet with the suspicion that it’s about money.
As it happens, the I found the course is useful, and might even be useful to people who are more habitual speeders. I would not mind the course being COMPULSORY with a fine for more serious examples of speeding and repeat offending. Certainly I took away a few tips for safer driving from a bloke who knows what he’s talking about. Commentary driving as a means to combat boredom and fatigue for example. But I think the focus on speed and speed alone means the dick-head tail-gater who can only be caught by rear-facing cameras in non-police cars, or the dick-head (probably the same) who passes fast and close to cyclists, or the person overtaking round a blind bend, are NOT caught by speed-cameras. The police need to stop thinking speed cameras are all that matters. And they need to accept evidence from people who aren’t warranted officers.
This dick-head wasn’t speeding. But he WAS driving like a cock. And people like that only get caught when they hit someone. Road deaths have fallen over the years. Mainly because children are no longer allowed anywhere near roads until they’re in their mid-teens. Cyclists have all but disappeared and the car has become an armoured box so few die when they crash any more. 
Now cyclists are returning to the roads, we need to realise that driver attitude – the aggression of the white-van tailgater the Audi driver who simply must get in front at all costs, is what needs to be tackled if the long-term decline in fatalities is to continue. We must also build infrastructure which allows people to take a vehicle which isn’t a car in safety. Otherwise we’ve just chased the pedestrian and cyclist off the roads, and congratulated ourselves for increasing safety, and a nation of fat, sedentary, mollycoddled drivers. The driver has assumed he owned the road for too long. The roads must be taken from the driver and given back to people, whatever means of transport – shoe, bike, motorbike, horse or car, they choose for their journey.
My fellow delegates may have lacked the aggression of the true driving twat (those people aren’t given the option of the course), but they did all share the assumption that the car is vital, and there is no other option. That too needs to change. Let’s start building towns and cities around people, not cars. Finally we need to deal with driver behaviour that isn’t simply speed. Unfortunately, both of those seem to require more work and flexibility than the police or local authorities possess.
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Cyclists’ Dark Clothing and No Lights.

In my last post, I thought I had dealt with all the boring Tropes about cycling. But no. Apparently not content with looking for red-lights to run and achieving the miraculous feat of being simultaneously “in the middle of the road” and “on the pavement” we also all delight in wearing dark clothing and never have lights.

On this I have some sympathy with the motorist. I drive, and I am hyper aware of cyclists. However when I see one in dark clothing, at dusk (it’s worse at dusk and dawn than in the dead of night) without lights, I think it’s barely sporting to not give the motorist a chance to see you. Most cyclists, however want to survive their commute to work, and so deck themselves in blinking lights, high viz & reflective rucksack covers, Tabards, Sam-Brownes, Rucksack and Helmet covers, stickers, projecting lasers and so forth.

There is a whole sub-industry of bicycle accessories which are designed to make sure you’re seen. A set of effective lights can cost less than a tenner. You need to spend more if you want to see where you’re going without street lights, but a tenner will get you seen by an approaching motorist.

For my part, my bag is reflective and apparently lights up like a Christmas tree in the headlights. I always have a seatpost blinker, one further on my bag, and one attached to my helmet. I pump out 300 lumens front.  I never go out without my lights. Of course, it is one of the few things the police can stop a cyclist for. And in my experience, they do, quite reasonably stop cyclists without lights.

Let’s also deal with cyclists being “in the way”. I was told to “get out the way” this morning. See the video below.

This also deals with the “red light jump”, which is a simple non-issue. I agree, blowing red lights at speed is dangerous. Rolling through them, after the pedestrians have gone just gets you out of the way of the traffic behind, to everyone’s benefit. Traffic lights are more about not allowing cars to block junctions, than they are about safety, and bicycles don’t block junctions.

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“I was almost knocked down!” and Other Journalistic Tropes About Cycling

There are a number of Journalistic tropes trotted out when cyclists are mentioned in the press. There’s the idiotic “They should pay road tax”, when, of course, road-tax was abolished in 1937, and cyclists are more likely to own a car than the general population. Furthermore many cars are 0%-rated for VED, smart-cars, or many old vehicles for example. These don’t pay “road-tax” either. Are these less entitled to the road than a Range-Rover.

There is the stupid idea that cyclists on the road should be compulsorily insured. Of course in an accident, the cost of wiping blood off a car is negligible.  And in any case, cyclists are to blame for serious accidents in around only 7% of cases (where someone, almost exclusively the cyclist himself) is killed or seriously injured. The chances of a cyclist killing or seriously injuring a motorist, or damaging their vehicle, are so low that it really isn’t worth the bother. Dragging a motorist out of its vehicle and beating it to death with your bare hands is covered by existing statute. Alas. Most regular cyclists are insured, for their own protection. The public liability cover is given away nearly free, as it is so rarely needed.

Licensing cyclists so they can be caught breaking the law is another silly idea given a regular airing by fuckwits in the press. This has never worked, anywhere, ever. Everywhere where it has been tried, it has been abandoned as a costly and intrusive failure. Red-light jumping by cyclists get wankers hot under the collar because they think as the mondeo-man is held up, everyone else should be too. If you find yourself whinging about red-light jumping cyclists, please repeat this phrase: “bicycles are not cars and cannot block junctions”. Red lights are to keep the traffic moving through junctions, and are not about safety.

Cyclists should be made to wear helmets? All that does is reduce the number of cyclists. Of course some would hail that as a victory, but given one of the tightest correlations between a city’s “livability” and quality of life is its bicycle modal share, this is idiotic. No-one wears a helmet for utility cycling in the Netherlands, because no-one needs to. Helmets and other individual protective equipment such as High-viz clothing is a sticking-plaster on the gunshot wound of unbelievably hostile roads.

Removing free on-street parking is always criticised by local businesses, especially if a cycle lane is put in its place, because people routinely over-estimate the importance of driving on custom, often by orders of magnitiude. Even now, cycling and walking play a much greater part in the short shopping trips to town than most people realise. Pedestrianising streets and protected bike lanes increase footfall, in New York’s case by up to 25%. Walkers and cyclists take up less space, stay longer, visit more shops more often.

Finally, there’s the “I was almost knocked over“. I have never met anyone who was actually knocked over by a cyclist, and in two decades of regular, urban cycling, I have never hit a pedestrian, nor seen one get hit by a cyclist. My guess is that “I was almost knocked over” actually means, “something fast-moving in my peripheral vision startled me, and I cannot tell the difference between an involuntary endocrine reaction and danger” As the number of cyclists increase, maybe pedestrians will start to look out for us, as they do currently, and without complaint, for the cars which do, far far more regularly ACTUALLY hit pedestrians. And of course the consequences of hitting a pedestrian on a bicycle are usually vastly less severe than doing so in a car. However special ire is reserved for cyclists.

If journalists are to be believed, all cyclists run red lights, get simultaneously in the way of motor vehicles, and ride on the pavement. They are all dangerous scofflaws while the saintly motorists obey the rules of the road. If a motorist makes a risky pass on a blind corner, this is justifiable in the face of provocation from “lycra louts” who deliberately get in the way. Did we mention that all motorists obey the rules of the road, well of course we meant apart from those silly rules about maximum speed and parking of course, which are part of the “war on the motorist”. And if a cyclist ends up crushed by a motor vehicle driven by a near-blind illiterate who hasn’t slept for 20 hours, then he’s only got himself to blame for not wearing high-viz and a helmet and riding “in the way” not in the gutter where he belongs.

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