Need of civilised attitude to the bicycle (2)

Allow me to answer Frans. H. Said’s A Few Interesting Facts About Cycling and Cyclists Also Road Users’ (September 12 and 17 respectively).

The problem is that Mr Said’s commentary about cycling tends to be couched in an almost passive-aggressive style that seems more apt to scare people away from cycling rather than promote it. One of his latest quotes being “the problem is that cyclists are more prone to a nasty accident”.

While I would agree that the consequences of a minor collision with another vehicle may be higher, in reality the likelihood of an actual fatality is quite small. If one uses prevalence as an equal measuring stick across all-cause mortality rates for a million people over the last decade, car accidents account for an average fatality rate in the mid-1930s, with bicycles averaging only 0.4 per annum.

Additionally an inverse rule applies where greater numbers further decrease the likelihood of accidents due to driver familiarity. Equally, I have yet to see a letter from this erstwhile correspondent using the same treatment for SUVs, pick-up trucks or 4X4s, for instance. These are vehicles that according to robust academic sources are two to four times more likely to result in a fatality in a collision with a vulnerable road user. But we don’t ask people to make a reasoned judgement before buying one, do we?

Mr Said fails to realise that riding on the road has changed, as traffic has. The biggest challenge to cyclists today is actually driver behaviour, cited by 60 per cent of local cyclists in a recent vox-pop poll. Much has been bandied about, about drivers’ disrespect to cyclists, but if truth be told, drivers don’t respect other drivers either. Cyclists are just a couple of notches further down the food chain.

Unfortunately, car drivers don’t want cyclists on the road and pedestrians don’t want them on the pavement, either.

This makes cyclists second-class pedestrians, from a sociological and sub-cultural point of view, tending to be forgotten or even misunderstood when planning roads or considering traffic flows. As such they are forced to ride how and where they can, aided and abetted by vicariously learning riding skills from observing other road users.

This is contrary to European countries that had embraced the bicycle after the war, where cyclists and motorists do actually get along; drivers benefiting from a symbiotic relationship.

Space precludes me from addressing in detail Mr Said’s other claims but I must stress insurance is not currently available to individual commuters and the estimated 533,000 stolen bicycles in the UK needs to be taken in context of the UK’s 23 million cyclists. Additionally wearing high-visibility gear is only half the problem, active looking and situational awareness is the other far more significant half. An issue which brings us perhaps back to driver behaviour once again, yet Mr Said doesn’t seem so vocal when it comes to drivers’ behaviour towards cyclists.