Janice Turner writes in the Times about a need for a change in attitudes towards cycling and with it, more cycle friendly infrastructure. While trying to make a valid point, she undermines it with a combination of bigotry, ignorance and stupidity. While she may have a point about the lack of facilities for parking bikes at the journey’s end (she talks from a London viewpoint), there is a vague reference to terrorism that simply does not make sense and isn’t funny if it is supposed to be an attempt at humour. As a general rule, if you don’t have the talent for comedy, it’s best not to bother.
All along Horse Guards the railings were plastered in police notices: bicycles chained to them would be removed, detonated possibly, since the fear is bike bombs, which crop up in conflicts from Vietnam through to Ireland and Iraq.
A silly theme repeated later in the piece. It was daft the first time, so repeating it merely compounds the offence.
Anyway, we get onto bus lanes in the capital and some real ignorance.
Will these routes have barriers so the two-wheeled are finally safe from being squished beneath Land Cruisers? Er, no. For the main part, we will still be playing dodgems with buses and now motorcycles — yes, cheers Boris, for adding veering Vespas to our worries.
There is a perfectly sound reason that Boris is allowing motorcycles to use bus lanes – it is because the research carried out by TfL discovered from other trials across the country that RTIs reduced when the schemes were introduced. Yes, cyclists and motorcyclists are safer when they share bus lanes – despite the ignorant rhetoric of cycle lobbies who try to gainsay it. Oh, and only someone who is so terminally stupid, ignorant and bigoted that they cannot spare a moment to do any research will confuse a Vespa with a motorcycle.
We then get a bit of feminism thrown in for good measure. All that lycra is about testosterone didn’t you know?
Because elsewhere cyclists are just that: a random cross-section of humanity. Not a Lycra-clad male vanguard pumped with aggression and self-righteousness.
Funnily enough, I’ve seen that self-righteousness expressed by lycra-clad warriors of both sexes. Maybe I haven’t been looking hard enough. Also, funnily enough, in the UK too, cyclists seem to be a cross section of society – if you bother to look, that is. And, of course, it’s wimmin who get hurt in the cycle verses metal box contest (presumably men bounce):
Maybe it would have encouraged the left-turning HGV lorries who in London this year killed six female cyclists (women being vulnerable because we tend to ride defensively, hugging the kerb) to check their mirrors.
Not only sexism, but sheer stupidity as well. Maybe if they hadn’t been hugging the goddamned kerb, the driver would have had half a chance of seeing them. Hugging the kerb is not defensive riding, it is fucking insane, especially if you are creeping past slow moving or stationary traffic. Hadn’t it occurred to you that HGV drivers have limited vision from their cabs and that you shouldn’t fucking well be there?
Okay, I realise that cycles cannot keep up with the traffic, but if you hug the kerb, then you are asking to be run off the road. Riding defensively means making yourself visible to other road users by riding assertively and sufficiently out in your lane that passing traffic will have to manoeuvre out to pass you and not be tempted to sneak past when it is unsafe – because they will, given half a chance. Or, like me, don’t ride a cycle on a city street – I prefer a decent engine beneath me so that I can move with or pass other traffic.
Apparently cycling is a cure-all as well.
The answer to so many intractable modern problems — obesity, urban congestion, global warming — is cycling.
There you go, if only hmg knew that, they could pass a law compelling us all out onto our cycles and solve all our problems in one fell swoop. On second thoughts, better not give the bastards ideas.
Underneath the stupidity is a sensible article trying to get out. The idea that a better infrastructure that would encourage cycling is a good thing, is a fair point. Yes, when I lived in Bristol, I could get almost to the city centre without going onto the roads, but when there, it was the usual dicing with the traffic. Preferring not to, I would take the motorcycle or car. So, yes, more protected cycle-ways would have made a difference to me.
Upon reading the piece, the question swilling around my mind is, with the level of ignorance and piss-poor research, just how does this woman get paid for her writing and can I have a job at the Times?
“Hadn’t it occurred to you that HGV drivers have limited vision from their cabs…”
Obviously not, since she mentioned that they should be ‘encouraged…to check their mirrors’ when turning left.
Which isn’t the point.
They can check all she wants, they aren’t going to see her there if she’s creeping up in their blind spot. That’s why it’s called a blind spot in the first place…
.-= My last blog ..Six Of One… =-.
Quite so and I see cyclists doing just that. Trucks also tend to swing out when turning left, so cyclists and motorcyclists who creep up on the right hand side of a truck signalling to turn left are also being pretty stupid.
The fuckwits that cycle through Cambridge know all about ‘defensive’ cycling. They’re so very defensive, that they don’t even use the wide, separated-from-the-road-by-grass-and-trees cycle lanes that have been built on most major routes.
Oh no, they’re out in the middle of the road, swerving out to pass cars turning left as if they’d paid as much road tax as anyone else.
Until they want to leave that particular road, at which point they’ll bump up the kerb and then swerve across a zebra crossing right in front of you.
Fuckwits.
_
.-= My last blog ..How was it for you? =-.
I used to see something similar in Bristol. A perfectly good cycleway built on the old railway line and people would ignore it and cycle on the dual carriageway.
Yes, cyclists and motorcyclists are safer when they share bus lanes – despite the ignorant rhetoric of cycle lobbies who try to gainsay it.
I can vouch for this on a daily basis.
.-= My last blog ..[missionaries and cannibals] get them to the other side =-.
The Times needs to fill its quotas of drivel-that-will-reinforce-the-views-of-the-majority-who-read-it (whether penned by Matthew Parris or Janice Turner).
But why don’t you submit some of your posts to show them how it should be done?
.-= My last blog ..The Wit & Wisdom of Harriet Harman =-.
Would I have to take the swear words out?
That would be a shame.
.-= My last blog ..http://www.thirteen23.com – Blu for twitter and a whole lot more. What… =-.
What a moronic woman. As a cyclist who very definitely does ride defensively (or I’d have been killed long ago), I can very conclusively state that overtaking HGVs on the inside on a bicycle is not in anyway ‘defensive’, it is, in fact, practically suicidal.
People who die this way are either very stupid indeed or have a deathwish, and thus are no loss to society.
Pity the poor lorry driver who has to hose them off his axles, but mourn the dead not one jot.
I am something of a heretic, as cyclists go, in that IMHO the first and easiest thing that cyclists themselves could do to improve things is stop acting like such enormous twats all the time and show some common sense and courtesy to other road users and pedestrians. Just little things, like stopping at red lights when riding on the road.
Or even, perhaps, taking that two grands worth of bike and god knows how many quids worth of lycra and helmets and actually riding it on the fucking road, like the thirty year old adults you are, instead of on the pavement like a four year old girl.
Naturally, this does not endear me to my fellows in the two wheeled tribe.
Nor would expressing the opinion that this harridan is wrong in other ways :
Bus lanes are OK with me, never had a problem. Mopeds and all. Bus drivers, and for that matter taxi drivers and lorry drivers, are professionals who use the roads all day long, and far less likely to run me over than Three’o’Clock Tina on the school run, who doesn’t even bother to stop at zebra crossings. And the reason that this harpy doesn’t like mopeds is because they have become the vehicle of choice of what she probably regards as the underclass. It’s amazing how they’re so romantic and sensible in Rome and Barcelona, but a menace in London, isn’t it ?
We don’t, actually, need vastly improved infrastructure for cyclists, they just need to learn how to ride on the roads without leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake. When I was anklebiter it was assumed that children of primary school age would be quite happy and safe riding their bicycles on the road, and we were even trained and tested to make sure of it.
Considering that I can’t get a licence to drive because of sight problems, and that I have been riding a bicycle on the roads of the UK for knocking on thirty years now and been involved in precisely two accidents involving other road users, and seriously injured in neither (nor were any third parties), my question has always been “Just what the fuck is everyone else’s excuse ?”
Oh, comment above w/r/t Road Tax (actually, Vehicle Excise Tax, clue in the name, really) : nope, the only roads paid for out of general taxation are the motorways, and cyclists aren’t supposed to be on them. All other roads are paid for out of council tax which your cyclist is as likely to have paid as you are, so you’re on a wrong’n’ there, I’m afraid. There are plenty of reasons to hate cyclists, god knows most of them deserve it, but that’s just not one of them.
Oh yeah, and if you’re talking about Cambridge, just get used it. The Bicycle is King in Cambridge, everyone knows that who’s ever been there. Live with it.
“Riding defensively means making yourself visible to other road users by riding assertively and sufficiently out in your lane that passing traffic will have to manoeuvre out to pass you and not be tempted to sneak past when it is unsafe – because they will, given half a chance.”
Hear hear.
It doesn’t stop you being hooted from behind by – usually – drivers of small cars who appear to think they DO have a right to pass you when it is indeed unsafe for them to do so.
As for blind Steve,
“I am something of a heretic, as cyclists go, in that IMHO the first and easiest thing that cyclists themselves could do to improve things is stop acting like such enormous twats all the time and show some common sense and courtesy to other road users and pedestrians. Just little things, like stopping at red lights when riding on the road.”
Hear hear to you as well!
I take the line that conspicuous observance of the rules of the road is necessary to signal to the drivers around me that I have the right to my space on the road and if they touch me I will sue.
Oh and eye contact.
If there’s someone you’re worried about – the car trying to pull out in front of you etc – look at them. If you make eye contact, they’ve seen you – otherwise assume they haven’t and act accordingly (which usually means look behind, signal extragavantly, pull out right into the middle of the lane, make a mental note of the offending car numberplate and get ready to jump on the brakes).
The same is true for lorry drivers. If you can’t make eye contact with him in his mirrors, he hasn’t seen you. That’s rarely – if ever – his fault. Even leaving aside that even if he has seen you, the side of a lorry is a damned fool place to be.
Without wishing to generalise, HGV drivers are – generally (there I go) – extremely proficient. Their ability to judge the width and turning circles of their vehicles is more often than not superb.
How’s that for heresy from a cyclist?
Eye contact is incredibly effective. I use it on the motorcycle – particularly when people are waiting to pull out onto the major road and I am approaching.
I ditto your comment about HGV drivers’ general level of competence. I couldn’t manoeuvre an articulated rig the way these guys do. I take my hat off.
I’m sure it doesn’t 😀
“Naturally, this does not endear me to my fellows in the two wheeled tribe.”
Au contraire – you’ll get my vote any day. The tosspots to which your comment is actually addressed give ALL cyclists a bad name and – tangentially, just tangentially – allow some – but not by any means all – drivers to think “sod them”.
That’s the dangerous bit.