Please don’t feed the pondlife

This is quite timely considering the current news story about the guy who was left brain damaged after being hit by an RLJing cyclist. I don't dispute for a second the devastating effect on the victim but it's a sad fact that this was only in the news because of it's extreme rarity - consider how many people are maimed and killed by motor vehicles weekly that never make a blip on the nationals, never the less it's been perfect fodder for hate columnists in the gutter press.

What I did find quite disturbing was the comments made by the victims wife about the incident, now I know her life has been turned upside down by the effect on her family and you can't blame her anger but I think she echoes a common view that cyclists are a sub-class of human and ultimately the authors of their own misfortune.

She said (from the Times)

“I want the whole world to know that cyclists have a duty of care to behave like human beings,” she said. “It’s about time people stopped worrying about cyclists being killed by lorries if they do not conduct themselves in the right manner. He nearly killed my husband.”

That, unfortunately is what we're up against and on the whole I'm in agreement with Martin but I suspect that we're preaching to the converted here.

Some people are twats.

Some people are twats on foot. They are an annoyance.

Some people are twats on bikes. They are an inconvenience.

Some people are twats in cars. They kill and maim by the 1000.

I think I know who the real problem are.

Tough question. On Friday evening I went out for an hour, and was slowing down approaching some lights when a driver passed me then pulled right in, indicating left. Now ok, he wouldn't want someone getting trapped on his left, fair enough, but there's an ASL, and the light was red, so I passed him via the huge gap on his right. Seeing that his window was down, I commented "really necessary to pull across me was it?" as I passed. Then I sat in the ASL and watched several cycle commuters use guerilla tactics to cross; pedestrian crossings, jump the red, you name it. From the driver's point of view, he was probably thinking that "you lot just go through anyway" - he may have even thought that I only obeyed the red light in order to claim the moral high ground.

I think it comes back to the whole 'lumping us all in together' thing again. I don't assume that all drivers are idiots/red light jumpers or whatever else, I don't need grouping together with people I don't know.

Car drivers in general aren't idiots. Cyclists in general aren't idiots. Idiots are idiots, they just happen to choose a mode of transport like the rest of us.

Most people in this country don't cycle. To them, it's immaterial whether you're riding £5k worth of carbon fibre to get yourself in shape for the Etape and obey every traffic rule, or whether you're riding a BSO with the saddle set way too low and weaving in and out of pedestrians in a zone where you're not allowed to ride bikes. You're a cyclist, and we're all lumped together.

Not that antisocial cycling is the preserve of those that some of us wouldn't view as cyclists; last year in the centre of Oxford, in a street that is a de facto pedestrianised street (traffic only allowed for access, so you see very few cars), a woman on a nice road bike tore past me at I guess more than 20mph, almost took the wife and dog (and several other pedestrians) out and all to save a few seconds.

When I'm on the Continent, I look at how cyclists and pedestrians interact, and I'm not necessarily talking about places with huge levels of infrastructure either - in Reggio Emilia for the Giro last year, people heading off to Monday morning at work in the pedestrianised centro storico, and there was a lot more awareness on both sides than seems to be the case here, pedestrians looking knowing that cyclists are around so not suddenly lurching to one side, cyclists not tearing through the crowds as I've all too often seen here.

Like Martin, I confess I've done a bit of that myself in my time, work colleague once told me how I'd left a pedestrian petrified in my wake when I reckoned I'd given them plenty of room.

I don't see anything contradictory about Martin's article - I see someone who rides a bike expressing how pissed off he is about the behaviour of certain other people who ride bikes.

He's not the only one.

This article is a contradictory mess.

I agree with Clive A that you can't lump every person on two wheels into a community of cyclists.

Please don't assume that I've got any affinity with some numpty, weaving along a crowded pavement, taking phone calls, scratching their backside and ignoring every roadside instruction, simply because they also happen to straddle a bicycle.

In Holland, Germany and Belgium, where daily use of a bicycle is commonplace, people classed as 'cyclists' tend to be passionate, sporting or recreational riders.

Can we take the same view when reporting for Road.cc?

'Cyclists Dismount' must be the most overused sign in the country. It's the default setting for any moderately complicated junction or possibility of conflict. Familiarity makes them quickly become invisible wallpaper on our streets.

Arseholes will be arseholes whether in their Audi or on their fixi or Yabba Mundo whatsit or other covered in kids. Consideration for others is a wider social issue that may take a little time to overcome.

Some people in cities behave selfishly.

And some of them ride bikes.

Shock horror.

I'm sorry, but this just doesn't add up.

We are not "a breed". We are individuals. When we harp on, pleading with "ourselves" to behave with the kind of unity we would never expect of drivers, we pander to the idea of cyclists as a tribe of outcasts and oddballs.

Missing the point.

I started reading this piece expecting you to turn it around halfway through and say, actually all those situations occurred with cars, not bikes, and that the people who complain about lunatic dangerous cyclists don't seem to care that their driving brethren are doing exactly the same day in and day out.

You're spot on though, while there are so many traffic laws/bi-laws and just general polite sign-age being deliberately ignored by cyclists it's hard to make a real stand against those who are happy to ignore the danger cyclists find themselves in every day.

An effort needs to be made to ensure that cyclists operate within the law just as motorists are obliged to do so. Likewise there needs to be some education that what most cyclists generally think of as small things (jumping the red light slightly, weaving down a pavement, ignoring some sign-age because you want to take the quickest route home etc) is dangerous not just for them as individuals but for cyclists as a whole because the longer we continue to break the law and annoy drivers the longer it'll take to put the 'war' to bed and for everyone to be living in a cycling utopia.