Cycling awakens my inner Trotwood. David Copperfield’s great-aunt Betsey was obsessed with donkeys trespassing on the green outside her cottage. My pet peeve recently has been delivery vans parking in a cycle lane I use every day, which forces me to swerve into the path of oncoming traffic.
Honed by repetition, it now takes less than a minute to photograph the offending vehicle on my phone, find an email address and the names of the company’s directors, and fire off the picture and a complaint, copying in the council’s highways department.
However therapeutic such efforts may be for me — I also have video cameras fore and aft, so I can record and report close shaves, road-rage incidents and other diversions — they only nibble at the problem. Our roads, and especially junctions, are mostly designed for cars. And as a new report by the parliamentary all-party cycling group illustrates, the justice system is still skewed in favour of the four-wheelers. Injuries on the road are only drifting down, but convictions for dangerous driving have plummeted, by 30 per cent in a decade. That reflects lax enforcement, not better driving.
No surprise then that nearly two thirds of people (especially women) still think cycling on the road is too risky. That is a pity. In 40 years on two wheels I’ve suffered nothing worse than a bump, and cannot imagine moving around any other way. Cycling is not only healthy for the pedal-pushers: it reduces pollution and congestion. I support every proposal for safer streets, more cycle lanes and tougher treatment of bad drivers.
Yet my tribal loyalties to my fellow cyclists are mixed. A survey shows that 39 per cent of British drivers admit to getting angry with us. In the southeast, 80 per cent have “verbally abused” a cyclist. I wonder if the other 20 per cent are telling the truth.
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Some of that anger may stem from misguided beliefs: that cyclists don’t really belong on the roads, or should accept being scrunched into the gutter rather than making a driver brake. But it is not all baseless. Why should cyclists be allowed on the road without insurance, blithely pedalling away if they clip a wing mirror or scratch precious paintwork? Why do they ride without lights? Or flout traffic rules with impunity? And why are they so blasted smug?
Behind these gripes is an important point: people who are inconsiderate, or worse, in their treatment of others cannot be surprised when they in turn are treated as nuisances.
Particularly indefensible are the grim-faced dispatch riders who treat pavements as racetracks, and pedestrians as contemptible inferiors to be shooed or whistled aside. We cyclists are the weaker folk when we are on the roads. We should remember how frightening a fast approach on two wheels can be for those tottering on two feet.
My own remonstrations with speed-crazed cyclists are mostly as fruitless and expletive-ridden as attempting to chat to drivers about their overtaking habits. (What sometimes works is to start by admiring the vehicle: “Lovely car!” may prompt a surprised grin, after which I add “but you did give me a bit of a fright back there”.)
I have more luck with my after-dark project. Every autumn I buy a hundred or so bike lights: the small Chinese-made strap-on kind, housed in silicone rubber, costing less than 80p apiece. When I see a black-clad cyclist, bereft of any illumination or reflector, flitting down a dark street, I politely offer him (these scofflaws are almost always male) a pair of lights. The reaction is sometimes splenetic, but more often bemused if shamefaced gratitude.
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The culture war between cyclists and motorists is marked by the same mutual paranoia and self-righteousness that plague other parts of life, such as politics. Rather than escalating recriminations, the counterintuitive way out is for cyclists to improve their behaviour. I am surprised how few of us give a friendly wave to motorists who make an effort to help us. We could even try smiling. It would also help our image if the cycling pressure groups would acknowledge more loudly that motorists’ exasperation is not wholly unfounded.
But the real problem is enforcement. My daily commute includes a Kensington Gardens cycle route (shared with pedestrians) where the authorities have optimistically erected signs urging us to “Slow Down, Enjoy the Park”. They might as well write in Tibetan. To save a few seconds, cyclists also skirt the speed bumps, scarring the grass. Lately the authorities have replaced the damaged turf and protected it with large barriers, complete with flashing lamps, to try to deter us from taking these trivial but annoying detours.
Rather than these costly and unsightly efforts, I would prefer to see police officers levying on-the-spot fines for dangerous or antisocial behaviour. A friend of mine was recently fined £60 for cycling through a central London park and she hasn’t done it since.
This does not mean a draconian clampdown on every minor bit of naughtiness: I have some sympathy for cyclists who avoid the traffic by trundling carefully down a deserted pavement, or take a left-hand turn at a red light. But treating truly antisocial behaviour with at least some severity not only reduces the risk of accidents, it also protects the law-abiding. Demonstrating that we are bound by law is the best basis for arguing that we need its protection. Impunity, in short, cuts both ways.
And my Trotwoodian crusade against the delivery vans? It has come to a salutary if unexpected conclusion. The council resurfaced the road — and abolished that bit of cycle lane.
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Edward Lucas writes for the Economist
Michael Gove is away