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You can thank Anonymous for this. The ever present anonymous sniper who posts snide or rude comments - you're simply not welcome.

So anon. comments disabled for this blog now. I suspect its one cringing yellow chicken who's been leaving the insulting yellow comments, but it isn't worth my time dealing with such an idiot post by post.

You know who you are. Grow some and post as an adult now. Or live a long life alone with your cowardice. 

Why aren't I plagued by cyclists?

I ride my bike to get to places. Thats what a bike is for, its to get me close enough to a place such that the rest of the journey is better done on foot. A bicycle isn't a political tool, and if you think it is I cordially invite you to read a decking fictionary. Its a vehicle, it shortens time spent travelling to a destination such that we then don't have to spend as long walking - and its a more economical and healthy choice than driving or getting the bus. That's all it really is - it isn't a device that I define myself by. Its a machine, not a social commentary.

So that means I'm also a pedestrian. I don't tend to ride my bike to a town and then ride around in it - its a hassle unlocking and locking it up again, so I tend to lock it up and walk around. In truth I'm as much a pedestrian as I am a cyclist. All of us are.

As a pedestrian I'm forced to ask what the hell is going on with all the people who complain about all the cyclists. I've been a pedestrian pretty much since I learned to walk, and in that whole time I don't recall being hit by a cyclist, nor have I been threatened by a cyclist. I've had a cyclist swear at me once, ever - on a big, fast, wide, shared use facility where I'll confess I was distracted and not looking where I was going. I've had a cyclist fall off on the  pavement near me once - he was drunk out of his face, riding slowly behind me and fell off. I called him an idiot as his drunk friends (who were in agreement with this point) picked him off the ground and I kept walking 

Why is it I see so many comments about cyclists being a problem on the pavement? Is it that in Britains cycling capital I'm leading a strangely charmed life, and that I'm really odd in never having been 'mown down' or 'nearly killed' by a cyclist while walking around? 

I don't like treating anecdotes as evidence, its lazy and unhelpful, but the real data (which shows cyclists are killing around 100 times fewer people on pavements than motorists are) bares so little resemblance to the perception of Boudicca like spiked wheels scything through the ankles of modern Britons as to be hilariously irrelevant. The idea that cyclists are causing this mayhem is so widespread that we see nonsensical articles that crudely divide distance travelled by injury rate (thus ignoring the dualled A roads and M roads which make up the majority of that figure for motorists, one's that that cyclists can't practically or legally ride) claiming that cyclists are as dangerous as cars. The idea that cyclists are destroying lives is so prevalent that trollumnist hate-pieces are blandly put out by newspapers, reaping the a hate-fear harvest on a scale they're scared even to try to drum up over immigration. We're so hated that we're seeing concerted attempts to booby trap roads and cycling routes, a trend which left un-checked will lead to fatalities.

The numbers don't add up - there are of course stupid and antisocial people on bikes but they're in a vanishingly small minority. You simply can't correlate next to no deaths and serious injuries with endless anecdotal near misses, such a concept would be a statistical brain fart, its not real. Its not credible - to believe that cyclists are 'nearly killing' many thousands while actually killing one every three years takes that special kind of ignorance I like to call 'prejudice'.

But take a step back - we don't talk about cycling safety in simple 'this is how many people are killed' terms. We also talk about subjective safety - where even though its statistically 'not that bad' we don't use some routes because they feel dangerous.

I put it to you that cyclists 'feel dangerous' in the same way that turbans on the buses were a problem. Cyclists are dangerous like immigrants used to be - i.e. they're pretty much not, but the perception of us as outsiders, and the constant reinforcement of negative stereotypes as acceptable in the media does make people worry when they see us. The answer isn't that cyclists must behave better - the evidence is that we're not breaking the rules sufficiently often or severely to justify the hate we see. The answer? Reject their prejudice.

Want to start a conversation with a stranger? Well you can't say 'bloody cyclists!' any more. Want to tell a joke? Well while people are assaulting cyclists just for riding you can't tell that joke about us. It's time we made cycling hate speech as unacceptable as any other hate speech. 

Cycling needs some social-justice style rage. Are you with me?

Cambridge - The Reality Bubble, Cycling and Campaigning

Cambridge is a bustling little city. Many weekends in summer there's some kind of event on, sometimes there are several - and this was the case a couple of weeks back when we had both the Town and Country festival and Arbury Carnival.

I was surprised not to see folk from Cambridge Cycling Campaign with a stall at either - there were many other local groups at both events and they're such regulars at these things that its always odd not to see them. I'll confess I was also a little relieved the Campaign weren't there - I always used to be nervous I'd run in to (then) Councillor Rosenstiel at the Liberal Democrat stall, but I think he kept his head down in this part of the city after putting his foot in it once too often - and I worry rather that the disgraced ex-councillor will turn up at a Cambridge Cycling Campaign stall and I'll end up being one of those too disgusted to stop and talk. As it was, I ended up having a lively discussion with the LibDems at the Carnival, when they made the quite unlikely choice to defend Rosenstiel after I expressed relief he wasn't there. I remain contemptuous of anyone not willing to distance themselves from him.

But this got me thinking about the Cambridge Reality Bubble. Jokingly its referred to as a student thing, but Cambridge is a strange city in many other ways too. I wonder, is a bland acceptance of people acting in ways that would get them ostracised in other cities also part of the same phenomenon, allowing us to have a broad based cycling culture? Is Cambridge Britain's only cycling city not just because of the influence of the University, but in part because this city is, by UK standards, barking mad? Do people cycle here because they're not negatively judged, because you can identify as a 'person who cycles' without that being a negative? 

I've touched upon Cambridge Eccentrics before. Several times, in fact. Its not a city where there are a few eccentrics to be aware of, its a town where you just don't bat an eye if a chap walks past dressed as Russian doll, where performance art meets parody on the streets of the city and no one really cares. A town where if you cycle throuh with a giant dragonfly scultpure on your back the only comment will be 'Quick, somebody call an entomologist!' So is Cambridge unique as a cycling city in Britain because fewer people feel the need to 'perform' socially? Is Cambridge a cycling city because its somehow less prone to people worrying about people judging them on appearaces (whether they drive, WHAT they drive, how they dress etc.) than other cities? Free of the social imperative to be judge on what they drive, do Cambridge residents more often than not freely choose to cycle because its a more practical option? And as such, is the problem we face in getting the rest of the UK to cycle not one of identity rather than infrastructure?

The Cambridge 'reality bubble' certainly goes way beyond Reality Checkpoint  these days - both spatially (encompassing the wider city and surrounding hi-tech industrial sites) and conceptually (its not just the University now - if it ever was). Do we simply have to accept that this city will remain an outlier both for cycling uptake, and for accepting a range of behaviours that just wouldn't be condoned elsewhere? I don't like either possible answer to that.

Sickening Road Rage Incident

Well, if you keep up with cycling news in the UK you can't fail to have heard about this incident. If by some miracle you haven't come across this, here's what everyone seems to be talking about - its not pretty, and it sure as hell is NOT SAFE FOR WORK. 

There is little I can add to this story that has not been extensively said elsewhere.

But lets step back and ask whats really happening - passing a cyclist that closely is an aggressive act - if you nearly kill someone with a car you need to expect them to be pretty full up with adrenaline. So, yeah, the cyclist responded with some profanity - not unreasonable considering he was under attack - the driver saw the cyclist and knowingly passed very close, pulling in ever further in response to the cyclists angry, terrified shouting before getting out of the car to remove any uncertainty we may have as to his intentions - he says himself that he'd break the cyclists neck if there weren't witnesses.

But look at the guys face as he gets out and approaches the cyclist - to my eye this isn't just fight or flight response, and his initial insistence that the cyclist should be in the cycle lane isn't just aggressive, its dismissive. He's not taking the risks to himself in this situation seriously - he's disgusted by the cyclist who has, from the outset, been the victim of his wrath.

We need to look further than this guys anger, we need to get past this simple act of aggression and view this as what it really is - status and entitlement. He's better than the cyclist just because. His seriously threatening behaviour is justifiable because its a cyclist. In his mind we can act that way to cyclists because they're cyclists - you can do that to cyclists who are not breaking any rules or giving you the slightest problem, cyclists are already in the wrong. Look, he's not alone. 

Bluntly there are two things we need to see to stop this happening. Firstly, if there are cycle facilities (and there really should be) they have to be good enough to use - even lethally bad cycle facilities get us bullied for not using them (in Cambridge we call this the Milton Road Effect). But its not jut about cycle facilities, its about hate.

This guy was aggressive to the other guy because he was on the road, on a bike. Bluntly, the cyclist had done nothing wrong, the aggressor initiated this with his ridiculously dangerous overtake and compounded it with truly threatening driving and a brutal tirade of threatening abuse - all because the other guy was a cyclist. We must put pressure on our MP's and the Police and CPS to treat these as what they are - hate crimes. These incidents must be prosecuted in the same way we'd prosecute crimes based on ethnicity or sexuality hate - they come from the same pit of human psychology, and until we treat them as such we'll see no reduction in their frequency.

£90 fine, apparently. Not enough. Not nearly enough. 

EDIT: Had to change the source for the video, the original had gone. Huff Post still have it, so I've swapped to that one.

Resigned from Cambridge Cycling Campaign

I've got to look the guy in the mirror square in the eye.

And if I'm a member of an organisation with this guy on the committee, I can't be.

I joined the Campaign only last year, specifically to vote for their Space for Cycling document

Not assaulting a child in the street is a more important ethic for me than campaigning for better cycle infrastructure. Call me weird but that is how I'm built, if I can help it I won't put my name to something Colin Rosenstiel runs - even the Liberal Democrats wouldn't have him as a councillor any more, but Cambridge Cycling Campaign don't share their weeding criteria.

I've been pondering this for quite a long time, and I've become sickened at my own inactivity. No more.

So, membership card destroyed and email sent resigning membership.

I don't anticipate a cascade of membership resignations from an organisation which, like most, is made up of members who mostly don't get involved - this isn't about them. Its about the accusing looks from the guy in the mirror who knows better than I do that you can't betray your conscience and still be a good man.

Cycling caste? You're disgusting.

I rode up past a lorry to the ASL (advance stop line - the little red box at the front in some junctions, with a bike painted in it, to give cyclists a head start) on Gilbert Road this morning only to see that the lorry was also filling the box. So I joined the cyclist who was already in front of the ASL, and another two folk on bikes joined us there. I looked back and up at the driver to make sure that he'd seen I was indicating right, and he met my gaze with a cold, visceral look. Like he'd just put his hand in cold jelly or something - his gaze was past hostility and distaste and into pure, undisguised disgust.

The disgust response is, psychologically, a fascinating phenomenon which gives us a clear physical cue to show its happening - a curled lip, the wrinkled nose, something hard to avoid showing when you're truly disgusted. Go on, open the lid on a stinking wheelie bin on a hot day and tell me how you react - you may even feel the urge to vomit, there's a real, physical response there. Because you identify it as unclean you are disgusted by it - and this is true in social settings when talking about human beings too. The disgust response is a visceral human response and it is how social groups justify excluding outsiders - it is a fundamental part of how the caste system worked (and, sadly, sometimes still works) - its part of racism, of bigotry of nearly all kinds. That dirty things disgust us tends us to view things that disgust with unease, often as if they are dirty - this is an unavoidable association, its conventional, uncontroversial psychology. 

And this is what we're up against as cyclists. Its not about us being 'different' or just a social out group - I put it to you that in a car obsessed society, where we're judged not only by what we drive but whether we drive, by making the choice not to drive somewhere we're seen as worse than social outliers - we're seen as having a lower status, as a lower caste of people fit for derision, for hate, even as fair targets for violence. Or, at least, people you can get away with threatening.

The results of this are varied, but include the fact that the death of a cyclist isn't often treated seriously, and even paper thin excuses will be seen as credible when assessing what went wrong. That the other guy on a bike acts to dehumanise - he's different, its therefore partly his fault. 'Well if you hadn't been riding a bike it wouldn't have happened'. It is considered fair and reasonable to defend horrific hate speech against cyclists with 'but they deserve it' or 'thats just my opinion', in the same way that homophobic or racist language used to be used. Groups who 'disgust' us are seen as broadly representative of each other - they're stereotyped by bad actions of even a tiny minority - and the only difference between this being viewed as prejudice or 'just an opinion' is how widely this disgust is shared.

Look over your shoulder from the advanced stop lines. Look at the driver behind you, as you signal which way you're going try to make eye contact. Yeah, most of them don't mind, most of them pay little attention, but just look out for the odd ones who snarl, who curl their lip and sneer at you. We disgust them because, in their eyes, we are disgusting.

The answer to this isn't to sort our own lot out - it isn't us creating this problem. We could ride like saints nearly all the time and we'd still disgust them. The answer? We need to be what the politically correct movement was. We need to humanise cyclists by not accepting any attempt to do the opposite - it must become socially unacceptable to 'other' cyclists.

Where to even begin?

Fair and Proportionate Road Safety

Motons portray cycling advocates as somehow unbalanced in their view of road safety and, from that, imply that our joy from being on two wheels somehow unhinges our minds. Far be it from me to state that unlike them our brains are far enough from our arses to not be thus influenced, even when riding on cobblestones, but I would like to address 'fair and proportionate.

Lets keep it simple - lets assume that the attention given to cycling and motoring should be proportional to how people are killed by cyclists/motorists. 2,000 people or so are killed by motorists, per year, in the UK. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but its a good round figure to start with. While each such death is an unmitigated tragedy, statistically this pales into insignificance against the number of people killed by the air pollution, which largely results from our road traffic, estimated to be 60000 or more per year.

There are numerous articles linking obesity to driving, I shan't bore you with endless links, but this is a phenomenon visible across the developed world. The less physical activity we take, as a society, the fatter we collectively get - and the most direct correlation is found in motoring. More than 30000 obesity related deaths occur in the UK every year - but lets be generous and say that despite the evidence of a direct causal link between driving and taking next to no exercise, we'll only blame 25% of those deaths on driving.

So driving costs us, give or take, 69,500 lives. Per year. In the UK. Yeah, I know you're going to say 'but some of that pollution comes from Europe!'. It does, and much of ours blows over there too, and the balance is absurdly in our favour with the prevailing wind in this part of the world. 

Now on to cycling. It transpires that cyclists kill so few people you can barely find them - its something in the region of 1 per year. 

So just in terms of body count, if we're going to take a proportionate view of people dying as a result of road transport, we should pay 1/69,500th of the attention to cyclists. And the rest to motorists. To put that another way if we put out a message about road deaths, once per day, every day of the year, then we should talk about the harm cyclists do once every 190 years, concentrating on motorists all of the rest of the time.

The truth is that anyone asking for such a discussion to be 'proportionate' while insisting that we talk about cyclists is an idiot, a bigot, or both. Don't be suckered in to accepting that 'there are faults on both sides' or 'yes we should be more responsible'. If they drive, and you cycle, you have the moral high ground.