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news
London cyclists at traffic lights (copyright Britishcycling.org_.uk).jpgFears that new Halfords survey will prompt negative headlines for cyclists
There are fears that a survey published today by Halfords, the car parts, cycling and outdoor retailer, that purports to focus on sharing the road, may instead be seized upon by the mainstream media to cast cyclists once more in a negative light.
While the survey, based on a sample of 2,042 adults and conducted by YouGov, canvasses the views of both cyclists and drivers (many people, of course, are one and the same), road.cc understands that at least one media outlet seems likely to focus just on the elements regarding those who ride bikes, and not in a positive way.
In the preface to the report, Halfords chief customer officer, Karen Bellairs, says: “Other than wanting to inform, we wanted to use this report as a means to celebrate the fun, freedom and togetherness that journeys bring to us all.
“But perhaps most importantly, we wanted to examine whether there was a genuine willingness among cyclists and motorists to share the road, and we were pleasantly surprised with what we discovered.”
But there are concerns among cycling campaigners that following on from recent media coverage, a number of outlets will focus on specific findings related just to cyclists.
Those include that half of respondents believe that cyclists should have to take a proficiency test before being allowed to ride on the road, and 26 per cent say bike riders should be checked on their knowledge of the Highway Code.
Harsher penalties for cyclists who do not follow the Highway Code was backed by 86 per cent of respondents, while 59 per cent agreed that bicycles should carry licence plates.
There are positives from a cycling point of view in the survey – four in five people, for example, agreed there should be tougher penalties on motorists who drive aggressively near cyclists, and 45 per cent that all roads should have dedicated cycle lanes.
Duncan Dollimore, Cycling UK’s head of campaigns and advocacy, said: “While Cycling UK was not consulted about this survey, we know following discussion yesterday with Halfords that their intention was to highlight common concerns of all road users.
“However, given the uneven tone of the current debate on cycling, it was perhaps optimistic to expect this survey would be a constructive addition to the discussion.
"’Sharing the Road’ is a snapshot of public opinion, not a report based on any analysis of the costs and benefits of the measures which people said they supported.
“We already knew some people instinctively think regulation and testing of cyclists is the answer.
“Those people frequently fail to appreciate the practicalities of imposing and enforcing regulations on children, the costs involved, or the public health and other implications of putting up further barriers to cycling.
“Fortunately, government has consistently reached the conclusion that such proposals are disproportionate and unnecessary.
“Ultimately, there are opinions expressed in this survey which we agree with, and others we don't, but the truth is this is merely a summary of what people said in response to a series of questions.
“It's far better, when suggesting a need for change, to assess the arguments for and against, and this is precisely the point we will make to government as it considers its forthcoming cycle safety review.”
The conviction in August of Charlie Alliston for wanton and furious driving in connection with the death in February 2016 of pedestrian Kim Briggs was followed by a slew of headlines and columns highlighting the danger people on bikes were perceived to pose to those on foot.
Just one example came last Friday, when the Daily Mail published an article under the heading, Victims of killers on two wheels: These six people all died after being hit by cyclists and 100 more are badly hurt every year - so when WILL the law crack down?
The six cases highlighted by the newspaper span a decade, with the Daily Mail highlighting that over the past seven years, 25 pedestrians have been killed in collisions involving cyclists.
However, since the focus on such collisions intensified following the Alliston case, cycling campaigners have pointed out that they form a tiny percentage of road traffic fatalities; in 2016 alone, 448 pedestrians, and 102 cyclists, lost their lives on Great Britain’s roads.
A campaign launched by Mrs Brigg’s husband Matt, supported by the family’s Lewisham East MP Heidi Alexander, has gained huge media exposure and resulted in transport minister Jesse Norman ordering an “urgent review” of cycle safety that may result in an offence of careless or dangerous cycling being introduced – something many campaigners would agree is overdue.
However, they also argue that such response should be proportionate, and that the government should place more attention on drivers of motor vehicles, who are involved in the vast majority of fatal incidents on Britain’s roads.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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42 comments
These surveys are a fairly commonly used tactic by PR folk. Choose a subject that is either topical, controversial or curiously interesting... please note, the topic needs to be broadly related to the organisation 'commissioning' the survey.
Ensure survey asks questions in such a way to generate some media satisfying attention, then publicise. Sit back and watch as media promote your brand for free!
Now on this occasion this survey strikes close to home and rigthly many cycling enthusiasts are pretty unhappy about it. However on the scale of it, this offended group is smaller than the size of the market halfords will be targetting, so the offence will be more than worth it for the overall gain in brand awreness and advocacy across target groups.
Now I here people shouting 'avoid the brand' and I absolutely support that approach, however I suspect Halfords will have done their homework and will have rightly worked out that the small percentage of people pissed off enough to take action will also be the furthest from their existing / target market.
Be honest, how many of you regularly shop at Halfords?
The only thing I am hoping they've got wrong is neglecting to think through that whilst more serious cycling enthusiasts are unlikely to buy their biking stuff in halfords, these cyclists still drive cars and are therefore halfords customers at some level.
So please do boycott halfords; their cynical throwing cyclists under the bus for a free headline can go get stuffed!
@massive4x4 - I think cyclists would be a lot less "adversarial" if we didn't keep getting shouted at by drivers for using the road (e.g. "use the bloody cycle path - we paid taxes for that", "ride single file you idiots" etc.). Also, being driven at and occasionally hit by drivers tends to make us somewhat "adversarial" especially as we see money earmarked for cycling provisions being wasted on useless painted lanes that don't have priority at junctions (whereas the road does).
To be honest, I don't know how you can keep abreast of politics in the UK without getting very angry at how cyclists are treated and also very angry at how the air pollution is getting worse and everyone seems to be ignoring it.
FTFY
Also for reference a survey of 2041 people correctly set up will have a high confidence of predicting the UK population.
Election surveys may have failed to predict the results of closely fought elections but they were not out by more than 5%.
What is at fault is the idea that you drive positive societal change by demonstrating something is popular then doing it. If something is popular, beneficial and easy to do politicians would be doing it!
Things tend to either be definitely beneficial but unpopular either broadly or vehemently unpopular among a small group. Or things are popular but actually have negligible benefits or are difficult to do because they would negatively affect a large number of people.
Things like legalisation of homosexuality, ending the death penalty and legalisation of abortion were not popular for decades after they had happened. The key thing was that people weren’t about to take to the streets to protest against them and progress was incremental. The same will be true with making cycling mainstream in the UK.
I don't think many commenters have had a pop at the sample size per se, more at the leading questions. I'm not going to second-guess Halfords's strategy or what YouGov or Halfords intended to do with the data, and I don't have to to decide it's a bit silly.
You say to aim for infrastructure. You also say to be non-adversarial. We might define 'adversarial' differently, but if you have a look at how the country with the most widely lauded cycling infrastructure actually got the political will in place for that infrastructure, it got pretty adversarial. 'Stop the Child Murder!' wasn't all polite letters to numpty executives of barely relevant purveyors of cheap car tat, as you seem to be recommending.
UK cycling already has reason and intelligent commentators, and as much as I'd happily have Chris Boardman as PM, it is achieving Not Much at a snail's pace.
My point about adversavial is focusing on penalties for car drivers (people like those who's support we need) is counter productive and will achieve very little.
Nobody is driving along thinking if I kill a cyclist I'll only get 1 year in jail let's go nuts, or thinking I'd better slow down because now I'll get 5 years if I kill that cyclist.
1: Nobody thinks they are going to kill a cyclist
2: The chances of even the most reckless drivers being personally resposible for killing a cyclist is virtually zero. Fatalities or even serious accidents are rare.
Also increasing the sentances handed out to drivers cost absolutly nothing for the department of transport!
Insted of focusing on the drivers, focus on how the road was dangerous. The Dutch didn't all become safe drivers around cyclists and then they got the infrastructure, it was an incremental process involving all of the above. How many cycling groups support by-passes and flyovers?
True, but set up correctly is not the same as asked of a bunch of volunteers off the internet. Some of the weird proportions suggest this survey is, to put it mildly, flawed.
I think this might be slightly misleading, but not entirely wrong. Political opinion polls have decades of previous election history and continued refinement. Furthermore sampling can take account of previous voting, voting intention, demographic based weighting etc. to produce a fairly accurate representation of the general population. Creating a representative sample is probably a lot harder to do for (afaik) the first study of its kind.
All true but that is because the small sample size has to predict a complex beast like the UK general election.
This survey will have been done through a customer research/polling organisation. They normally have a demographically representative sample of people on their books who they ask things of every so often. The only skew on the sample is that they are obviously people who agreeded to be surveyed. I have been involved with academic work using some of these pannels.
If the question is, if you asked the Halfords question to the general population it is highly likely that the general population would respond in a similar manner.
That is very different from insisting that the general public have certain view points which as pointed out is more of an artifact of the questions asked which certainly do not stand up to academic rigor.
it might be different, but I suspect it is more probably not
in the case of a self-confirming narcissistic closed circuit the lack of any critical perspective on their own behaviour is what lead to the questions being phrased in a leading way in the first place - then carried out at a car spares shop which has a nominal bicycle part tacked onto it almost as an afterthought - which then, surprise, surpise, produces exactly predictable results
I have no doubt that halfords, just like the poorly researched claims of the daily mail, perceive themselves as well intentioned - unfortunately assuming a positive intent does little to challenge the obvious bad faith of the result.
There is a general principle of life that many posters on this forum would be well advised to consider.
"Assume Positive Intent"
Halfords is not a campaigning organisation; I suspect the route of this came from their community relations or CSR department. They probably want to paint a positive message of car drivers and cyclists getting on in perfect harmony.
I'm pretty sure that Halfords looking at a future of electric cars, self-driving cars and car share schemes is very much behind the UK becoming more like the Netherlands especially as people will continue to maintain their bikes at home. Halfords should be an ally.
So rather than suggest that Halfords are idiots or boycotting Halfords, instead send an e-mail to the Halfords exec named in the reports. Make it polite; thank them for their contribution and point out it would be better if they engaged with some cycling advocacy groups before embarking on any future research.
Secondly as a general point the cycling lobby needs to stop focusing on penalties for drivers. It is adversarial and it doesn’t work, look at the US prison population to see the negatives of harsh penalties and how ineffective they are as a deterrent.
Instead focus on making cycling a mainstream activity supported by good infrastructure, make every child a cyclist before they are a driver and you will have the basic empathy that makes aggressive driving around cyclists socially unacceptable and presumed liability an easy sell.
It's all well and fine to assume positive intent, but they didn't need to ask these questions, nor did they need to stress the answers in their press release. All of which suggests they knew fine what they were about, supporting their core business with the car tinkerers.
Of course it is worth remembering why drivers were originally required to be licensed, tested, identified and insured. And why other road users - including pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders, were not. The drivers presented a danger, the other road users massively less so.
Yet over recent times that's been forgotten, and replaced by a sense of entitlement. "We're entitled to use the road," the drivers' refrain goes "because we're licensed, insured, registered and tested. Unlike you lot on bikes. We demand cyclists are subject to the same rules as us, otherwise get off our roads!" Completely misunderstanding why it is one group of road users is subject to more controls than another.
The government should have a driver education programme encouraging motorists to act like big grown-ups and show tolerance for other people. To underline the need to Grow Up they could call it the GUFFS initiative.
At the risk of trouble here, as I work with said researchers on occasion, as others have said surveys can really stir up trouble. This is especially true if you set out with the strange objective that they have, to see if they can share the road. They'd basically already made assumptions.
You then get a question along the lines of:
Which of these have you seen on the roads:
1. Red light jumper
2. Cyclists riding two abreast
3. Cyclist not using cycle lane
And on and on, this then just creates a whole heap of negative messaging that is cannon fodder for the media.
Another thing you can do is then rank the needs etc. Which of these are important to you (rank):
1. Cycle lanes
2. Helmets
3. Education on close passes
4. Feeling safe on the road
5. Leisure cycling facilities
Then they can create messages like "cyclists value leisure over helmets" or "most cyclists don't value cycle lanes" if it's ranked 3rd or below.
The screening questions really should have identified those that cycle for commuting, leisure etc. and cross referenced with those who also drive to commute etc. so they had some quite clear splits. The questions should have been very direct on what people's concerns are, what they commonly witness etc. And also quite simple:
How much space should you give when passing a cyclist at 30mph? 0.5m, 1m, 1.5m, 2m, Shouldn't cross white line then repeat at other speeds. Have you ever passed a cyclist too closely? Do you think a cyclist should use a cycle lane if one is provided? What may prevent a cyclist from using a cycle lane?
The best bit of this survey is surely the note that 43% of respondents "can tighten a loose chain". I'm boggling a bit at this point, but together with other odd proprtions, and the lack of any clearly reported sampling method it surely should have suggested to someone in Halfords that this is all somewhat suspect (or "bollocks" in technical stats speak).
They introduced harsher penalties for such crimes as not wearing a helmet (same as speeding) and not having a bell and not carrying ID in NSW, they also introduced the 1.5m 'rule'. The police managed to fine people riding bikes over a $1M in the same period they prosecuted SIX motorists for breaching the 1.5m rule.
There's no 'sharing', not when people on bikes are already pushed off large swathes of the public highway already and are under threat of harm on pretty much every single journey they make!
All surveys can suffer from selective reporting, it just depends on what angle you want to push and very few are innocent of it.
I would like a number plate, but only if it's like the ones that TdF riders have on their bikes, under the saddle, 'cos that looks pro!
On a more serious note, who actually cares what motorists think of cyclists, and what they should, or shouldn't do based on their choice of transport?
By extention, does it mean that I, in my nice sporty motor with high VED should be able to give my opinions on my roads being cluttered up by nasty slow little hatchbacks that don't pay road tax (sic)? Can they have a special lane too and keep out of my effing way?
Fine except when I'm commuting or touring and use the space behind my saddle for my bag.
I think that we should be a lot more like TdF riders and each have an RFID transponder on our bicycles (carriages and motor vehicles too, of course). That way there can be automated systems to fine people for being stationary in yellow boxes, crossing against red lights, slaloming through closing level crossings, entering prohibited lanes, etc. Maybe automated destruction of any carriage or vehicle lacking an RFID. No exemptions for police vehicles without them showing just cause to an independent tribunal.
"road.cc understands that at least one media outlet seems likely to focus just on the elements regarding those who ride bikes, and not in a positive way."
Are we taking bets?
So they asked 2,042 adults 'what do you reckon?'
Faced with Y/N questions like that you can't read anything into it
Only 1/4 saying cycling proficiency should be mandatory seems sensible, but then 59% want licencing which is barmy, so hardly seems that respondents have thought it though?!
So, it looks like this country wants to make it harder for cyclists, whereas they're looking to the future over in Holland:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/18/world-first-3d-printed-bridge-cyclists-netherlands
It's more likely the Halfords, like Jesse Norman MP and his shit-for-brains letter to cycling orgs, are pandering to - and providing a platform for - the opinions of a small subset of the population. One good thing that may (and should) come out of both of these things is that it will galvanise people to act instead of accepting the status quo.
many motorists cn't even share the road with other motorists,never mind cyclists.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/video-news/northern-ireland-road-rage-...
Given that 100% of Halford's acquisitions in the last year have been cycling businesses, maybe it is time to boycott Halford and it subsidiaries: Boardman Bikes, Cycle Republic, Tredz, tredz.co.uk and wheelies.co.uk? Just to remind them that a large propotion of their proffits come from sales to people who ride bicycles.
Would be interesting if the 26 per cent who think cyclists should be tested on their Highway Code knowledge actually know anything about the rules they themselves are supposed to be following...
"Harsher penalties for cyclists who do not follow the Highway Code was backed by 86 per cent of respondents"
You can't be penalised for not following the Highway Code—whether you're on a bike, on foot, in a car, or anything else.
It really all depends on what leading questions these people have been asked as to what we can learn from it, probably not much. Just like the Government's recent shambles of a survey on internet security / online extremism.
https://www.icmunlimited.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2017_PX_online_r...
One of the leading questions was:
"You say you would be willing to give up at least some freedom. How much of your right to the following freedoms would you be willing to give up, if any, if your personal security could be assured?"
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