When and how the Dutch separate bicycles from motor vehicles

If you live in the suburb of Baggelhuizen in Assen, which lies in the south-west of the city, outside its ring road, you will use Hoofdlaan to get in and out of the city. It’s a fast, straight road, with a 70 km/h speed limit, and nasty pinch points, like this –

It’s the kind of road that in the UK, you would be expected to cycle on – indeed, you would probably have no choice but to cycle on it.

But this is Assen, and of course, we have a wide and smooth cycle path, all to ourselves, running directly alongside this road.

Well, not quite to ourselves – the day we cycled along it, the grass was being mown by the council, and the cycle path was ‘blocked’ by their vehicle –

This is the kind of path upon which ladies can cycle into the city, as relaxed as they like, without having to worry about vehicles travelling close to them at 50 mph.

It’s a road, for bikes.

As Hoofdlaan meets the ring road, there is a busy roundabout.

How do we get across?

The bicycle path and footpath pass directly under it. We don’t encounter that large lorry you can see moving around the roundabout, at all. Our progress is serene.

It’s lovely to be separated from motor vehicles in this fashion. But it doesn’t occur everywhere. Further into the city, Hoofdlaan becomes a road which bicycles have to share with motor vehicles.

At this point, you can see where the cycle paths – to the left and right – cease, and the carriageway becomes shared. The speed limit, however, has dropped from 70 to 30 km/h, there is a speed hump, and the centre line has disappeared. It feels safe to share with cars under these conditions.

You can see these principles on another road, Asserweg, as it approaches the village of Loon, to the north-east of Assen. This road has a 60 km/h limit – reasonably fast – but again we don’t have to share with vehicles here; we have a bi-directional path to the left.

In the village itself, vehicle should be travelling at low speeds, and so there shouldn’t be any need for the separation of bikes and cars to continue – in any case, the space between the houses is rather too narrow for the provision of separate paths.

So what do we see?

Before the cycle path we are using rejoins the carriageway, there is a sharp chicane that vehicles have to negotiate, to ensure that their speed drops to the 30 km/h speed limit in the village. There is also a rough cobbled surface, to give a distinct impression of speed, compared to the smooth tarmac beforehand. Only when the vehicles have been slowed sufficiently does the cycle path feed into the road.

It’s unfeasible to expect cars to travel everywhere at 20 mph; there have to be fast roads for cars. But it’s also unfeasible to expect people using bicycles to share these roads, with vehicles travelling at 50+ mph. This is where the Dutch will keep you separate.

In places where cars should be travelling slowly anyway – in villages, or in the built-up suburbs of a city – the low speed limit makes sharing much more of a possibility. And besides, there often genuinely isn’t the space for separate provision for bicycles. In these circumstances, the low speed limit is coupled with rough surfaces, a lack of centre marking, and other measures to encourage careful driving.

You can read more – much more – on David Hembrow’s blog.

The winds of change?

Over the last week, I’ve spotted something rather strange happening in Horsham.

A Dutch invasion.

A practical Batavus.

An ancient Gazelle.

A child’s Batavus.

But the invasion isn’t limited to Dutch bicycles – some British bicycles are getting in on the act.

A Dawes.

A Pashley.

A Raleigh.

In fact – again over the last week – I’ve seen quite a few beautiful, sensible bicycles in town. 

I couldn’t identify this lady’s bicycle – but it looked rather new. As you can see, she’s dressed in ordinary clothes. No helmet, hi-viz, or unnecessary accoutrements.

I’ve also spotted this Swedish ‘City Crescent’ bike – which has a coaster brake, integral lock and dynamo lights.

And in this picture, we can see a gents ‘Real Classic’, lined up next to the aforementioned Raleigh and Gazelle. Three in a row.

The Gazelle and the child’s Batavus have, it seems, actually come from the Netherlands. Whether they’ve been bought there by British residents, or have accompanied Dutch migrants to Horsham, I don’t know.

The Swedish bicycle has come from Finland. Its owner had left it behind, buying a ‘British bicycle’ when she arrived here, which apparently fell apart after six months. She then got her parents to ship it over for her.

Investigation reveals that the ‘Real Classic’ bike is stocked by Halfords, for the princely sum of £179. At this price, I’m not too sure of the quality (maybe I’m being unfair), but I think we have to give credit to Halfords for stocking these kinds of bicycles at reasonable prices. At a guess, the rather more expensive Pashley would probably have been bought there too.

These kinds of bikes – which until recently were very scarce in Horsham – surely indicate an increasing appetite for practical, attractive bikes that are easy to ride and maintain. Even the humble, bog-standard mountain bikes that still tend dominate Horsham as the bicycle of choice seem to be being modified in ways that make them rather more useful as a town runabout.

These two have been fitted with mudguards, racks and panniers, as well as smooth tyres.

Unfortunately practical town bikes are not particularly compatible with Horsham’s cycle-unfriendly road network, on which you have to make right turns across multiple lanes of fast motor traffic, like at the location seen in the picture that heads this blog, where ladies dismount and shuffle their way across the junction, before proceeding on the pavement, or on the road, when there are no motor vehicles about. Or negotiate giant, sweeping roundabouts. Or ‘take the lane’ on narrower, fast roads, with parked cars on both sides, and pinch points.

But even with these appallingly hostile roads, these bicycles are increasingly in evidence.

Isn’t it time we started making our roads and streets a little safer, both objectively and subjectively, for the people who might choose to use utility bicycles like these? There’s clearly an appetite for cycling – ordinary cycling – that needs satisfying.

A visit to Horsham police station

A wonderful example of the hostility of the UK urban environment to people making journeys on foot or by bike is provided by Horsham police station, where I unfortunately had to make a journey recently, to report an accident in which I was sent flying through the air from my bicycle by a motorist who, for some reason, failed to see my dazzlingly bright light. Or me, for that matter.

The police station lies marked, by the ‘A’ symbol, on the map below, just to the north-east of Horsham park – a pleasant five to ten minute walk from Horsham town centre, which appears at the bottom of the image.

But of course, you cannot walk into the police station, or the law courts, or the hospital, from the park. It is fenced off, through the line of trees you can see on the map. Simply walking in would be too easy; and besides, what kind of lunatic is going to want to make a short five minute walk to the police station when they could just drive the long way round and park? So anyone who wants to walk also has to go the long way round, and anyone who wishes to cycle has to deal with Hurst Road, a wide, fast boulevard which will require ‘Bikeability Level 3’ skills to negotiate (according to the Horsham Cycling Review carried out by Transport Initiatives).

And here is an example of how to park once you get to the police station.

On the pavement.

Every single one of these cars, almost completely obstructing the rather wide pavement here, must belong either to a police officer or a member of staff. It’s not really the best example to be setting, but as dealing with pavement parking is a council matter, I don’t suppose the police really care. In any case, nobody walks to the police station. The pavement is redundant, and best used as extra parking spaces.

But let’s not be too hasty – if you do manage to walk all the way to the front door of the police station, there is some evidence of your needs being considered.

Yes, there are some crash barriers, dutifully guarding the pavement and the pedestrians assuming their rightful place on it, which will hopefully stop any speeding motorist, careering around the corner into this dead-end, from obliterating you. Lucky you.

You won’t find anywhere to lock your bicycle though –

But then again, what kind of idiot rides a bike?

Certainly not the kind of person who might want to visit Horsham District Council’s own offices at Park North in the centre of town, where there are no bicycle stands (and yet dozens of free parking spaces), and the mere act of wheeling your Brompton into the reception area before folding it merits the stern warning ‘You can’t bring that in here!’

Why cycling and walking in West Sussex is going nowhere fast.

Pining for The Netherlands

Almost by accident, I ended up making three trips to The Netherlands this year.

Not going back until next spring at the earliest, I’m starting to get withdrawal symptoms. I’ve consoled myself with this small compilation video, of pictures taken in Utrecht (mainly), Assen, Groningen, Rotterdam and Amsterdam.

Despite the preponderance of bicycles that appear here, for my first two trips I was actually largely on foot. This wasn’t a problem – while I love riding bicycles, I also like wandering, and what is so wonderful about Dutch cities is their human scale, so easy and pleasant to navigate on foot, or by bike. You can, of course, drive a car around them, but for most everyday journeys it would be rather absurd, given that the alternatives are so much more uncomplicated and effortless.

What I also hope some of these photographs do is give the impression that there’s no such thing as ‘being in the way’ in The Netherlands; Dutch streets are, naturally, places rather than just thoroughfares. The ‘civic’ function of these streets is much more evident than the ‘traffic’ function. Unfortunately the complete opposite is true of most UK streets, which tend to be ‘roads’, even in places where there are large numbers of pedestrians – the people actually doing the shopping and interacting.

I’m just counting down the days until I can go back.

Friday Facility no.8 – Wellesley Road, Croydon

The short cycle lane on Wellesley Road in Croydon is possibly one of the worst, and most dangerous, facilities I have encountered. It’s extraordinarily negligent and thoughtless, even by the standards of the mindless crap that gets put on our streets.

The road itself is a rather unpleasant dual carriageway, with bus lanes that appear and disappear, apparently at random. As I trundled southbound on my Brompton, I eventually spotted the safe refuge of a cycle lane, that appeared to be protected by a kerb, just as the road started to disappear into the Croydon Underpass.

Fantastic! Except…

It comes to a stop after a few yards. Where do you go at the end of it?

You can’t cross the road. It’s walled off to you along it’s entire length (about which more below). You can’t turn left – that’s TRAMS ONLY. So your only option is to wobble across and rejoin the main carriageway, around an impossibly tight left turn, just at the point that vehicles are starting to scream down into the underpass.

You can then exit from the road again, into the bus lane, only ten yards further along down the road.

The lack of thought here is simply incredible. It’s almost as if the ‘designers’ have actually gone out of their way to put cyclists into danger; staggeringly, they have managed to install something that is worse than the absurdly dangerous u-bend ‘facility’ that was here before –

According to that site, 12 cyclists have been injured by catching their wheels in the tramlines – presumably because they didn’t fancy going anywhere near the main carriageway, and were cutting the corner, across the tramlines at too shallow an angle.

The choice is now even more stark.

Here, youtuber SkrzypczykBass makes an illegal turn onto the tram lines.

I don’t blame him for not taking the ‘legal’ route into the bus lane, and risking the tram lines. Of course, the safest approach, by far, is to avoid the entire thing altogether, and just stay on the unpleasant road, before joining the bus lane. I think that speaks volumes about the quality of this facility.

Incidentally, Wellesley Road itself is an appallingly hostile environment, both for bicycles, and pedestrians. You find charming signs like this on the railings in the centre of the carriageway –

People are dying in their attempts to cross the road. Instead of making it easier for them to do so, by actually putting in surface crossings and slowing vehicles, this is the response.

There are no surface crossings along this road, as far as the eye can see. Only a couple of miserable subways.

And just beyond those buildings in the far distance – after only one or two side roads – this enormous urban motorway suddenly becomes… an ordinary looking road.

Walk a few hundred yards south from this point, though, and it expands into a horrible behemoth, that is impossible to cross on foot. For no apparent reason; except, perhaps, that in the 1960s, this is what roads were supposed to look like.

‘Sharing space’ on Exhibition Road

‘Give way to pedestrians.’

I thought signs like this would be superfluous with the fancy new street layout, which we were told would intrinsically suggest to drivers that they are moving through a pedestrian priority area. But evidently this isn’t the case. I also thought shared space advocates had a hostile dislike of ‘street clutter’ like this, which presciptively – and unnecessarily – informs road users of the correct way to behave. It seems that giving way is evidently something that is not coming naturally to motorists – perhaps it’s not that easy to get rid of signs.

Anyway, let’s see how ‘giving way to pedestrians’ works in practice.

Attempt 1.

If I had continued attempting to cross here, I would have ended up on the bonnet of this Peugeot.

Attempt 2.

Rather than ‘giving way’ to me, the Mercedes moves over to the right, preventing me from crossing. I’m then in the path of a taxi who makes no attempt to yield. I hastily have to retreat backwards – hence the shaky camerawork.

Having finally crossed the road when there weren’t any motor vehicles about – how I would have crossed the road anyway, in the absence of ‘sharing’ – I then crossed back.

Again, we see drivers failing to give way, in this instance, two taxis. It is interesting to note that the second ‘Union Jack’ taxi driver, like the Mercedes in the previous example, is able to use the increased width of the road to ‘outflank’ me, and prevent me from crossing. The third taxi – who flashes his lights – lets me go, but only, I suspect, because he was already slowing for a queue of vehicles at the lights ahead of him. Again, this would be perfectly ordinary behaviour in the absence of ‘shared space’.

I’m not really sensing a revolution in driver behaviour here.

I’m back in the area again tomorrow to see if things have improved. Wish me luck.

 

A fatality map of Horsham

I’ve taken the opportunity today to have a look at the road casualty map produced by ITO World, which maps all the UK road casualties since 2000. It’s an excellent, if eye-opening, application.

Below is a screenshot of the map of my town, Horsham.

Each of the large squares represents a fatality. The purple squares are vehicle occupants, the blue, pedestrians, the orange, motorcyclists, and the green, cyclists.

One pattern is immediately apparent. Nearly all of the vehicle occupant fatalities – the purple squares – have occurred on Horsham’s ring road, skirting to the west of the town. This is not surprising – it is where vehicle speeds are highest – a speed limit of 70 mph.

Another pattern. While one 23-year-old male vehicle occupant has died on the inner ring road – the purple square in the centre, at the location shown in the photograph at the top of this blog – and a motorcyclist (the orange square) was killed in a collision with a milk van on the Brighton Road, the majority of fatalities within the town are those of pedestrians. What is also notable is the age of these pedestrians – 67, 78, 86, and 88. The most vulnerable people.

We also see two pedestrian deaths on the ring road – precisely at locations where they have to cross the dual carriageway. The 18 year-old-male killed on the northern bypass was hit trying to cross here –

And the young man killed on the western section was evidently trying to cross here –

These are both ‘ancient’ crossings that were severed when the bypass was built in the 1980s; the former a country lane, the latter a footpath.

I have used both of them; the first on foot, and the severed country lane by bicycle (astonishingly it is, in my experience, actually the safest place to cross the northern bypass. There are no bridges or underpasses anywhere on this section – only fast roundabouts). They are unnerving. Traffic approaches at a speed of 70 mph, at least, and you have to cross two lanes of it, in both directions. I don’t think many people try to use these crossings, and yet two pedestrians have died attempting to do so in the last ten years. They form a disproportionately large share of the fatalities on this bypass, to put it mildly.

Meanwhile in the town centre, it is, again, pedestrians who are being killed disproportionately. Car drivers are evidently quite safe at speeds of around 30 mph. By contrast, pedestrians, particularly elderly ones, are obviously far from safe in an environment in which cars are travelling at these speeds.

I don’t know how many of these pedestrians would be alive today with safer crossings and lower speed limits in Horsham – we don’t know the precise circumstances of each collision. What is certainly true is that maps like these are a powerful reminder of the vulnerability of pedestrians around motor vehicles.

Friday Facility no.7 – Battlebridge Lane, Redhill

As we approach the large junction between Battlebridge Lane and Ormside Way/New Battlebridge Lane in Redhill, we are directed onto the pavement, where we meet other cyclists simultaneously being directed onto the road, from the pavement – from both directions.

What physicists might call a singularity of cyclists.

Of course, we can see on Google Streetview that there just isn’t the space to implement a proper cycling facility at this location.

This junction was constructed just over five years ago. Clearly proper provision for cyclists was inconceivable.

(I’m not surprised cyclists might want to leap onto the pavement at this location, by the way, given the extraordinary rate at which ‘accidents’ occur here.)

‘Careless’ driving

From the Daily Mail –

A ‘callous’ barmaid hatched a cover story with her uninsured boyfriend to ‘save their own skins’ moments after he killed a cyclist in her car. Lauren Mellish, 22, was in the vehicle with Alex Dexter, 23, when he overtook three vehicles in the powerful Ford Puma before losing control and ploughing into Steven Rodway, 38. As the married father-of-two lay dying under the car, the couple were seen whispering together to concoct a story involving someone else taking it on a test drive.

Dexter, who only held a provisional licence when he got behind the wheel of her car, looked visibly shaken as he was given a 15-month term after admitting three charges including causing death by careless driving and causing death while uninsured. Speaking after the hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court, Essex, Inspector Keith Whiting said: ‘They got out of the car and made up a story to cover themselves without offering Steven any assistance.

‘I have never known such callous actions at the scene of a fatal collision.’ Mr Rodway’s widow Marrissa, 35, said she now lived for their children Harriet, six, and Erica, two, but always felt lonely without her ‘soul mate’. She added: ‘Alex Dexter and Lauren Mellish have turned our lives upside down and I know I will find it hard to forgive them for the heartache they have caused our family.’

Dexter, an engineer, was seen overtaking three cars before losing control as he tried to avoid a transit van on June 13 last year. The vehicle rolled down the road in Stapleford Tawney, near Epping, before coming to rest on its wheels on top of insurance worker Mr Rodway, who lived in Hutton, near Brentwood, and was out on a Sunday afternoon bike ride.

After climbing out of the overturned car, Dexter told a fireman that ‘another male had been driving the car’ and had run off. Mellish also lied, saying that a man she knew only as ‘Matt’ had been test driving the car and then escaped after the accident. Witnesses described seeing the pair – who have since split up – ‘whispering to each other’, adding they ‘didn’t seem concerned about the cyclist’. The false story led to police launching a major search operation for the fictional driver, including calling out sniffer dogs which were sent into surrounding fields.

Both defendants refused to comment during police interviews and it was only a fortnight later that Mellish finally said Dexter had been driving. Both admitted the charges at a hearing last month. They were also banned from driving for three years yesterday.

Setting aside the extraordinary callousness of these two individuals, who concocted a story about an imaginary driver that had run away while the man they killed lay dying under their vehicle (why were they not additionally charged with wasting police time?), what astonishes me about this story is the way in which the driver was charged merely with ‘careless’ driving.

Is an uninsured driver, who only holds a provisional licence, really only being ‘careless’ if he is overtaking three vehicles at such a speed that, in swerving to avoid an oncoming van, his vehicle rolls down the road and ends up crushing someone to death?

If this isn’t classified as ‘dangerous’ driving, what is?

Dropping an axe onto someone’s foot is ‘careless’. Waving an axe around in a crowded room most certainly is not – it is dangerous. Yet the rules seem to be rather different for the operation of motor vehicles.

It’s not hard to find other examples in which people have caused death through what would – ordinarily – be considered extraordinarily dangerous behaviour (an easy way is to use the ‘causing death by careless driving’ tag on the road.cc site, who should be commended for paying close attention to this issue), yet the CPS have only seen fit to charge them with ‘careless’ driving. Undoubtedly this is partly a consequence of an imperative to secure a conviction, which is more likely on the lesser charge, but frankly, if we look at the CPS guidelines, it is very hard to understand why drivers like Alex Dexter are not being charged appropriately –

What is ‘Dangerous driving’?

A person drives dangerously when:

• the way they drive falls far below the minimum acceptable standard expected of a competent and careful driver; and
• it would be obvious to a competent and careful driver that driving in that way would be dangerous.

Some typical examples from court cases of dangerous driving are:

• racing, going too fast, or driving aggressively;
• ignoring traffic lights, road signs or warnings from passengers;
• overtaking dangerously;

That describes his driving in a nutshell; and surely it would do so to any sane and objective observer. By contrast –

What is ‘Careless or inconsiderate driving’?

A person drives carelessly or inconsiderately when the way they drive falls below the minimum acceptable standard expected of a competent and careful driver.

Some examples of careless driving are:

• overtaking on the inside;
• driving too close to another vehicle;
• driving through a red light by mistake;
• turning into the path of another vehicle;
• the driver being avoidably distracted by tuning the radio, lighting a cigarette etc.

Examples of inconsiderate driving include:

• flashing lights to force other drivers to give way;
• misusing lanes to gain advantage over other drivers;
• unnecessarily staying in an overtaking lane;
• unnecessarily slow driving or braking;
• dazzling other drivers with un-dipped headlights.

None of these examples is appropriately analogous to Dexter’s driving, in any way shape or form. So why was he charged with ‘careless’ driving?

I leave you with an example of Robert de Niro and friends engaging in what our judiciary would consider ‘inconsiderate’ driving – just look at the use of flashing lights to force other drivers to give way, and the misuse of lanes to gain advantage over other drivers.

Giving cyclists a bad name

Picture courtesy of road.cc

You may remember this story from last year.

An Iraqi Kurd whose initial claim for asylum in the UK had been turned down was allowed to stay because immigration judges in Manchester ruled that, as he had a British wife and two children, it would not be right to deport him and destroy that family. But 33-year-old Aso Mohammed Ibrahim is not the average asylum case: he had been convicted of a string of motoring offences, including failing to stop after an accident in which his car hit and killed a 12-year-old girl.

Amy Houston was hit by Ibrahim’s car in November 2003. She died six hours later in hospital after her family had to take the decision to turn off her life support systems. Ibrahim, who was not charged with causing the accident, had already been banned from driving and was convicted of fleeing the scene and driving while disqualified. But although he served a four-month prison sentence, there were no moves by the authorities at the time to have him removed from the UK. (He had arrived here in the back of a lorry in 2001, on the run from Saddam Hussein’s atrocities against the Kurds.)

The initial story – the killing of the child – did not, for some reason, garner as much attention as the subsequent attempts to deport him some seven years later, which rapidly became a media storm.

A friend of mine – who is both a Kurd, and a motorist – was horrified by the behaviour of this individual, and wrote several letters to national newspapers, as the story hit the headlines last year, decrying him. She was worried about how his actions might tar the reputation of all motorists – good, law-abiding motorists like her.

No, of course not. She was worried how it might tar the reputation of all Kurds – good, law-abiding Kurds like her.

I don’t blame her. There aren’t many Kurds in the UK – only about 200,000. None of them is particularly prominent. So it was probably a bit upsetting that just about the only Kurd in the public eye last year was a callous bastard. It is therefore understandable that her response was to write letters pointing out that not all Kurds are like him, and indeed that the Kurdish community was just as horrified by his behaviour as the general public, even if it is only irrational people, or bigots, who might think otherwise.

To a lesser extent, this kind of logic works for cyclists. Among the people who get most upset by cyclists jumping red lights or riding on the pavement are the good, law-abiding cyclists, who worry about the effect the misbehaviour of these individuals is having on the reputation of cyclists more generally. There is an implicit recognition, in this hostile attitude towards cycling law-breakers, that there aren’t very many of us – and so the behaviour of these few individuals could quite easily tar the reputation of the rest of us. It’s a law of small numbers.

If the killer driver in Manchester had been – for instance – of Pakistani descent, or Welsh, I doubt any member of these communities would have felt the need to write letters to the national press, because the number of people who are Welsh, or of Pakistani descent, is sufficiently large to offset any potential assumptions about these communities as a whole. There are also plenty of prominent Welsh and Pakistani individuals in public life.

The same cannot really be said for cyclists. That’s why they tend to react in the same way as my Kurdish friend to the law-breaking of members of their group. Cycling forums are full of complaints about red light-jumping cyclists. We also see groups like Stop At Red –

Stopatred is a campaign to improve the status of cycling in the eyes of the public and policy-makers alike, and to tackle the attitudes of those cyclists whose behaviour perpetuates the image of cyclists as a low-status social ‘out-group’ on wheels.

Its specific focus is on the disregard of traffic signals.

It also has two general aims:

• To encourage cyclists to show courtesy towards other road users and pedestrians.
• To encourage greater compliance with the laws of the road.

Stopatred was created by concerned cyclists, alarmed about how the cause of cycling is being undermined by the reckless actions of an unrepresentative minority.

The primary motivation – as explicitly stated – is to improve the image of cyclists. But to me, attempting to achieve this through ‘greater compliance’ is as futile as attempting to stop all Kurds in Britain from committing crimes. A subset of all human beings will always be unthinking, or uncaring, or even malevolent. Some of these people will be Kurds, or bicycle users.

As I wrote earlier in the year, Stop At Red – and other cyclists who get angered by red light jumping – misdiagnose why cyclists continue to be seen as an ‘out-group’. It’s not because of the lawless behaviour of a minority of cyclists. Indeed, I am fairly certain that the proportion of law-breaking cyclists is approximately similar to the proportion of law-breaking motorists, despite the amount of column inches devoted to lawless cyclists. It’s because the vast majority of the UK population does not ride a bike, or even know anyone who rides a bike.

 Not many people ride bikes, while ‘everyone’ is a motorist. ‘Everyone’ has gambled their way through an amber light while driving, or glanced at their phone on the motorway, or been caught by a speed camera. These kinds of offences, because they are committed by ‘everyone’, are seen as part of the ‘natural’ make-up of being a road user, in a way that offences committed by a small minority – cyclists – are not.

It’s also why this parody of anti-cycling attitudes by Ian Walker is so absurdly funny -taking the language of anti-cycling prejudice and applying it to pedestrians highlights how ridiculous these attitudes are simply because everyone is a pedestrian at some point.

Those members of the public who whinge continuously about pavement cycling and red light jumping – and who simultaneously tend to ignore the concurrent law-breaking by other road users – are not going to be won over by a reduction in the numbers of cyclists who break laws, or even near-perfect compliance. For whatever reason, they hate cyclists; they are irrational morons, who draw conclusions about cyclists as a whole in much the same way that a bigot might leap to assumptions about the British Kurdish community based on the behaviour of one Kurdish criminal. They are not worth bothering with.

The only reason their attitudes get some traction in the local press and on the internet is because cycling is not seen as a normal, everyday activity by the population as a whole. When, if (God forbid), it is seen as such – when parents can let their young children cycle to school by themselves; when women can cycle into town looking as glamorous as they want to; when businessmen and women can turn up to meetings on a bike without being thought of as eccentric – their opinions will be laughed at.

So let’s ignore them, and concentrate on making cycling an obvious choice for everyone.