Cycling: best in a dress
Pedalling through London to work each day makes you feel glad to be alive. Often you will feel glad several times. There is nothing quite like flying over asphalt straddling a skinny contraption of moving parts with an articulated lorry lumbering ever closer, to remind you of the beautiful fragility of life, of your essential mortality. At least, you think, as you regard the lorry wheels grinding the tarmac inches from your forehead, at least you are wearing a helmet.
According to an academic from the University of Bath, the helmet is to blame for these close encounters. Dr Ian Walker bravely proved this hypothesis by taking to the roads on a bicycle and measuring the space that 2,500 drivers allowed him as they passed. When he wore a helmet, he found drivers twice as likely to pass “very close”. He was knocked off twice as he measured just how close he was to a passing bus and a truck. When he rode bare-headed, and when he wore a lady’s wig, they gave him a wide berth.
Drivers, he concludes, think the helmet a sign of an experienced rider. They are wrong of course. It is new cyclists who take to the road in full body armour and reflective suit: the real spoke gods are more blasé. I plan to keep wearing mine. But I might also buy a dress.