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It appears to be anti-cycling week in the media

25^th September 2009

Cycling has seen an enormous increase in popularity since the success at the Olympics, a cycle-friendly London mayor and the more recent British successes in the Tour de France.

After all of the efforts by Sky to get people riding their bikes in association with the Tour of Britain and their aim to get more people riding bikes over the next few years, the other side of the coin has been exposed.

There has been a lot of opportunistic and sometimes just plain bad, journalism over the past week or so where all cyclists have been demonised as lycra louts who don’t pay any road tax, ride on the pavement, jump red lights and disregard one way signs so shouldn’t be allowed on the road.

There has also been a lot of reaction on cycling forums and newspaper comments sections from cyclists and plenty of heated debate between the groups with some extreme opinions included from both sides of the fence.

There are bad cyclists on the road. In the same way that there are bad drivers, bad pedestrians, bad dog-owners etc,etc. Of course, everyone’s perception of what is “bad” is different which adds to the confusion.

Without individually unpicking all of the arguments that these journalists put forward to support their argument that only the mighty motorcar should be allowed to use the road system (cyclists don’t pay “road tax”, they’re not insured, there are cycle paths for them to use, the bicycle is out-dated technology and many more), I have a solution.

Everyone using the road should be just that little bit more courteous and realise that they are sharing a public space and as such should act accordingly.

The road system exists so that everyone can get where they are going by whatever method of travel they choose. That can be car, van, truck, bicycle, motorbike, on foot, scooter or any other form of transport that is legally allowed to use the roads. Maybe we all need to just consider the other people using the road a bit more rather than focusing on our desperate need to get to our chosen destination in the quickest possible time with little regard for anyone else around us?

Also, newspaper employees could stop punching out generalisations they scrawl down in their lunch break and passing them off as having any journalistic merit. These articles that boast of knocking cyclists in to hedges or calling them “green Nazis” do nothing but add to the animosity between road users.

After all, a famous comedian once pilloried the attitude that a lot of people have whilst using the roads. If we are walking on the pavement and there is an old lady in front of us walking slowly back from the shops and we can’t immediately get past, we don’t get a torch out of our pockets and start flashing it at her, screaming “Get out of the way, you shouldn’t even be on the pavement walking like that!!” Something to think about next time the red mist descends whilst you are using our road system.