CyclingMikey named by Daily Mail as one of the “top villains of 2024” – alongside the Post Office, VAR, Oasis, Gregg Wallace… and Paddington Bear

We know, we know the window for publishing long, meandering reviews of 2024 shut days ago – but it seems someone forgot to tell the Daily Mail.

Because on Friday, the newspaper’s online counterpart decided to belatedly celebrate the New Year by compiling a list of the MailOnline’s “top 12 villains of 2024” – featuring none other than road safety campaigner and camera cyclist CyclingMikey.

Yes, that’s right. Nestled alongside the likes of the Post Office, Gregg Wallace, Oasis’ dynamic ticketing policy, Just Stop Oil, and Paddington Bear (hold on, what?) in the Mail’s list of nefarious figures and divisive topics was CyclingMikey – real name Mike van Erp – the camera cyclist who has reported thousands of motorists, including the occasional celebrity, for their rule-breaking driving and mobile phone use at the wheel.

(MailOnline’s “top 12 villains of 2024”)

A contentious figure on social media, where he uploads footage of road users committing traffic offences to his X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube channels, Mikey has long been established as regular fodder for anti-cycling articles in certain sections of the national press, which have branded Van Erp a “vigilante” for his prolific third-party reporting.

So, it’s no surprise that the MailOnline staffer tasked with piecing together the publication’s “12 top villains of 2024” described the cyclist and road safety campaigner as a “pedalling pest” and the “bane of London’s roads due to his holier than thou antics”.

But what particular Mikey moment caught the Mail’s eye this year? Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, the incident that earned Van Erp’s spot on the paper’s villainous list for April was the rather bizarre post – covered on the road.cc live blog at the time – which showed Mikey himself committing a traffic offence by obliviously riding through a set of red lights.

> "I'll pay the fine! You're not going to see me complaining": CyclingMikey shares footage of him accidentally riding through red light, although barrister doubts prosecution is "in the public interest"

In the clip, which saw Van Erp stopped at traffic lights on Eccleston Street in Westminster, one of the four lights visible soon turned green, apparently signalling the cyclist to advance and cross the junction.

However, with no traffic following, and the benefit of camera footage to look back on, he worked out the other three lights were red and the green light was in fact for traffic coming from another direction and had been twisted out of place.

Having realised the error of his ways, Mikey then took the bold step of uploading the footage to social media and even invited any trolls who wished to report the incident to the police, giving the time and date of the incident to assist any report.

> “No war between cyclists and drivers”, say road safety campaigners, as apologetic BBC backtracks after “inappropriately” describing camera cyclist as “vigilante”

“It’s my mistake, I hold my hands up, I’m at fault there,” Mikey said during the YouTube video. “I missed that the other two traffic lights were still red. I realised something was wrong when the scooter rider next to me revved his engine and then stopped, so he obviously almost got caught too, but he and the other scooter rider behind me didn’t follow through.

“That’s probably the best use of video cameras that I have over the years, that I can go back and look at when there’s been a point of conflict or something’s gone unexpectedly and I can find out what went wrong and change my own riding as a result.

“If the police prosecute me, so what? I’ll pay the fine, you’re not going to see me complaining.”

> CyclingMikey says cyclists breaking rules are "annoying", but not focusing on drivers to improve road safety the "wrong way round"

And how did the Mail’s 2024 reviewer react to Van Erp’s admirably principled red light confession?

“Appearing to minimise his crime, the pedalling pest claimed that the intersection in central London was ‘fairly quiet’ and claimed other motorists had also nearly fallen for the traffic light,” the writer said of the “shocking” video.

“The peddling vigilante [what’s he peddling? – Ed] later added that he thought a ‘drunk’ may have twisted the sign ‘to point down the wrong road’.”

Apparently that’s enough to have you listed alongside the Horizon-scandal-laden Post Office, Glasgow’s brilliantly hopeless Willy Wonka Experience, and a certain former Masterchef host as one of the UK’s villains of the year.

But then again, he was also surrounded by the member of the public who threw a milkshake at Nigel Farage, school dinners, Just Stop Oil campaigners, and – I still don’t get this – the apparently “polarising” Paddington Bear.

“Does this mean I’m one of the good guys?” Mikey posted on social media after reading the Mail’s review.

> Jeremy Clarkson calls CyclingMikey a “sneak” and claims “using a phone in a car that’s not moving is as dangerous as knitting”

Of course, as noted above, this isn’t the first time that Mikey and other camera cyclists have been negatively characterised in the national press.

In October, after covering the rapid growth in third-party road safety reporting in a news article and in a BBC Breakfast segment, the BBC was criticised by cyclists for referring to both CyclingMikey and fellow safety campaigner Tim on Two Wheels as “vigilantes”, with Van Erp arguing that cyclists who submit footage to the police are, in fact, the “opposite of vigilantes”.

Following a number of complaints, including from Tim himself, who described the “vigilante” reference as “disappointing”, the broadcaster admitted to road.cc that the initial language used in their story was “inappropriate”.