‘As a group’ – James Cracknell, and confusion about bicycle users’ responsibilities

James Cracknell has come in for a bit of flak following his piece that featured in Saturday’s Times on the subject of cycle safety.

Now I think Cracknell’s heart is definitely in the right place; following his accident, and the damage to his head, he can no longer drive, and now has to use a bicycle to get around. He’s chosen a Christiana, bought from Velorution, for his everyday trips.

I think it’s tremendously valuable that a public figure – and a sportsman – is using a utility bicycle, and demonstrating that it can be a practical choice for urban journeys.

He also wears a helmet while using it. That’s fine. He – quite understandly – feels vulnerable, and has taken measures to reassure himself and his family. Everyone should be free to make choices about how they protect themselves.

But there are aspects of the article that appeared in the Times on Saturday that trouble me. Here’s the passage at issue –

What I do know about my accident is that I was on the right part of the road, had incredibly bright lights on and was wearing a helmet. I still have that helmet, which is split in two and covered in blood. The driver should not have hit me. But cyclists need to know that riding is a responsibility as well.

If you are cycling without a helmet, you are being selfish to your family and friends. If I don’t wear a helmet and I get knocked off and devastatingly hurt, how can I look my wife, kids or parents in the eye and say I did everything possible to make it home safely to them? It is like with football in the Eighties, where a violent 1 per cent minority of football fans meant the other 99 per cent were tarred as hooligans.

It is the same for cyclists. We need to self-police and stop the minority who wear their Walkman or jump red lights ruining it for everyone else and turning drivers against cyclists. Wear a helmet: your hair may get mucked up but it is not as bad as your head getting mucked up.

I’m not going to comment about whether or not Cracknell’s helmet did, or did not, save his life, beyond remarking that if it did split in two, it is unlikely to have offered the protection these helmets are designed for (this helmet cannot therefore be the one that Cracknell is holding – spattered in blood – in the photograph that accompanies his piece, for that is an intact helmet).

I think we are on dangerous ground when we start claiming that people who cycle without helmets – particularly for the ordinary, everyday trips that Cracknell is making on his Christiana – are being selfish, because it moves us onto a very slippery slope.

How many measures should we be taking so that we can look our loved ones in they eye and say ‘I did everything possible to make it home safely to them’, as Cracknell does? Should we be wearing high-vizibility clothing? Reflective clothing?

These could reasonably be thought to improve our odds of survival, particularly around inattentive drivers. Cracknell doesn’t appear to opt for these measures, alongside his helmet, while riding his bicycle (indeed he occasionally rides without a helmet as well – something attributed to forgetfulness following his accident), so by his logic, I could claim he is being selfish to his family and friends, because he is not doing ‘everything possible’ to make it home safely to them. A driver might hit him, and leave him ‘devastatingly hurt’ – a driver who might have seen him earlier and taken evasive measures if he’d been more fluorescent and reflective.

I won’t make that claim, though, because I think it’s quite offensive.

The next difficulty. The paragraph as a whole reads

If I don’t wear a helmet and I get knocked off and devastatingly hurt, how can I look my wife, kids or parents in the eye and say I did everything possible to make it home safely to them? It is like with football in the Eighties, where a violent 1 per cent minority of football fans meant the other 99 per cent were tarred as hooligans.

As it scans, it seems that Cracknell is making an equivalence between the hooligan minority amongst football fans, and those who do not take all the measures they can to improve their own safety – measures like helmets and high-visibility clothing. These are the people who, like hooligans giving the majority of football fans a bad name, give cyclists a bad name.

Now, charitably, I don’t think this is what Cracknell meant at all; I think he is referring to people who cycle in a dangerous manner – the subject of the next paragraph – rather than to the helmetless and non-fluorescent. This was suggested by the Times journalist Kaya Burgess, who is behind the Cycle Safe campaign.

So the article has been quite badly edited, and shouldn’t really have appeared in print in the form it does, because it suggests that the helmetless – and not just the people who ride in a careless or dangerous way – are those who are giving cycling a bad name.

But we have further difficulties.

It is the same for cyclists. We need to self-police and stop the minority who wear their Walkman or jump red lights ruining it for everyone else and turning drivers against cyclists. Wear a helmet: your hair may get mucked up but it is not as bad as your head getting mucked up.

The clumsy addition of the last sentence here again serves to give the impression that being helmetless is to be part of a minority who give cycling a bad name; whether this is deliberate, or just bad editing, I can’t tell. Setting this difficulty aside, we come to my main problem.

This idea of ‘self-policing’.

Was the hooligan problem in the 1980s tackled by football fans ‘self-policing’?

It most certainly was not, and I suspect anyone who tried would have been bricked. The problem was tackled by the authorities – policing, and enforcement. It shouldn’t have been left up to ordinary football fans to tackle the problem of hooliganism.

Yet this is what Cracknell is suggesting.

Quite what action he thinks I should take when I see someone on a bicycle jumping through a red light is unclear. Should I also jump the light, pedal after him, and perform a citizen’s arrest? This isn’t the kind of behaviour we expect of motorists when they see other drivers committing misdemeanours, so it is curious that we should expect it of cyclists.

The problem of some cyclists breaking the law should quite clearly be tackled by the police, and not by citizens who happen to be nearby on bicycles.

But Cracknell thinks that individuals should be accountable for the behaviour of other individuals, who happen to occasionally use the same mode of transport – at least, when that mode of transport is a bicycle. This much is apparent from a later tweet he wrote in clarification –

As a group need to ensure we’re riding safely/sensibly before we expect other road users to do the same.

‘As a group’.

Why should I – as an occasional bicycle user – ensure that other occasional bicycle users are riding safely and sensibly?

This is not my problem, nor should it be, any more than a 1980s football fan would have been expected to ensure that people in his immediate vicinity were not committing acts of hooliganism.

The idea that cyclists should be collectively accountable is deeply odd, especially so when we attempt to apply these attitudes to being a driver. There are several million uninsured drivers on Britain’s roads – indeed 13% of drivers in Greater London have no insurance. Plenty of other motorists rack up speeding offences – a substantial minority.

These people have taken a decision to be reckless and irresponsible, and it should, quite reasonably, be up to the police to sort it out, not other motorists. ‘As a driver’, the behaviour of these other people does not tar my reputation, nor do I feel it incumbent upon me to tackle it. Yet ‘as a cyclist’, there is a prevailing attitude that red light jumping and riding on the pavement does tar my reputation, and that it is incumbent upon me – somehow – to tackle it. I had someone tweeting me last night telling me that bad behaviour by other cyclists made them ashamed to be a cyclist.

The question of why bad behaviour by cyclists should make me ashamed to be a cyclist, when bad behaviour by drivers quite obviously doesn’t make me feel ashamed to be a driver, is something I have addressed at length before – a piece which, if you have time, I suggest you read, although I precis it below.

It’s because a minority of people ride bicycles – a very small minority, at that.

There are a sufficiently small number of Kurds in the U.K. for my friend to have become concerned enough by the behaviour of one of them – who ran over and killed a small child – to write letters to national newspapers, saying that the Kurdish community was shocked and appalled by his behaviour. If she, and the man in question, had been Pakistani, it is very unlikely she would have bothered. There are millions of U.K. citizens of Pakistani descent, and only imbeciles would draw conclusions about this group from the behaviour of one of its members.

Reduce the size of the group, however, and the concern grows, understandably, for the effect on its reputation. That’s why cyclists feel compelled to defend their reputation, and to attempt to stamp out the misbehaviour of the ‘members’ of this group – there aren’t many of us.

The trouble is, this strategy doomed to failure. As I wrote before, attempting to improve the image of cyclists through greater compliance is as futile as attempting, ‘as a Kurd’, to stop all Kurds in Britain from committing crimes. There will be a minority of dicks in every ethnic group, and using every mode of transport.

Additionally, as well as being hopelessly doomed, it actually serves to reinforce the absurd idea that I should held accountable for the behaviour of other people who happen to use the same mode of transport as me, at some point in time. Anyone who says to me ‘You cyclists, you never stop at lights’ in a fashion that suggests I am collectively accountable (this is surprisingly common, as soon as it becomes known that I happen to use a bicycle – I’m sure you will have your own examples) is having their idiotic opinion that I should be responsible for the misdeeds of other people actively confirmed by the attitudes exhibited by Cracknell and other ‘reputation improvers’ – however well-meaning their intentions.

Think about that.