Living the dream on two wheels

Why are cyclists so hated when we are essentially right about everything?

I am a member of one of Britain’s most despised minorities, a group it is still considered socially acceptable to mock, dehumanise and even incite violence against. Our only crime - our love of two wheels, and occasionally breaking a red light.

Britain is perhaps the most anti-cycling country in Europe, the public expressing a strong dislike for the activity, and presumably the people who take part in it. Cyclists here are seen as aggressive, arrogant and smug – even, shudder, Left-wing.

Personally, I’ve always found bicycles liberating. Once I’m out on the road with my middle-aged-man-in-Lycra machine all my anxieties slip away, apart obviously from the nagging anxiety of being mown down by a lorry. Even if you live in inner London, within an hour you can be out in deepest countryside and away from it all; as for commuting into town, it’s an obviously more logical, cheaper, quicker and healthier way of getting about, although not always relaxing.

In the late 19^th century bicycles were a truly revolutionary form of transport that opened up people’s horizons; in rural parts of the country, bikes also hugely expanded the dating market, offering young people a far wider pool of potential boyfriends and girlfriends. 

It was especially liberating for women: in Beastly Fury, Richard Sanders wrote how ‘Cycling, a craze which took off in the mid-1890s with the invention of the safety bicycle and the pneumatic tyre, particularly captured the imagination of young women. For fearful conservatives and radical feminists alike the bicycle was a symbol of the new age – a taste, in the words of one female cyclist, of “the intoxication which comes with unfettered liberty”.’

Just as importantly, bikes were of huge importance to working people as a way of getting around, illustrated in the classic 1940s Italian film Bicycle Thieves in which the loss of his vehicle is devastating to the livelihood of the rather pitiable protagonist. This is echoed today in Dublin with the problem of crime against the city’s South American delivery drivers.

Yet recreational cycling in London today attracts a very different type of person, the sort who perhaps might not look out of place enjoying a craft beer with the Led by Donkeys lads. One suggested reason for why the British dislike cyclists is to do with that old obsession, class: cycling was once seen as a poor man’s way to get around, but like many peasant pursuits is now a bourgeoise hobby, and that provokes resentment.

Indeed, even Sadiq Khan’s ‘cycling tsar’ has complained that the pastime in London has a diversity and class problem and is too white and male. I suppose that’s what all modern tsars do for a living – complain about things being too white and male – but if the pastime is male-dominated it’s partly because the city is so car-centred that a larger proportion of women don’t feel safe on its roads. If an activity is dangerous, then it will tend to become dominated by men, and in particular aggressive, disagreeable men – like, say, football in the 1980s. 

Cyclists manage to irritate by being both aggressive and sanctimonious, the ‘vegans of the road’. This image has not been helped by events such as ‘the naked cycle ride’, which tend to confirm in the public mind the association between cycling and the worst kind of middle-class narcissism. For social media users this sense of entitlement is probably epitomised by radio presenter Jeremy Vine, who runs a Twitter account where he films and complains about drivers in a way so damaging to his cause I wonder if he’s some sort of agent provocateur of the motor industry.

Then there are figures like Mike van Erp, better known as ‘Cycling Mikey’ to his 100,000 YouTube followers, who goes around Hyde Park with his GoPro catching out drivers using their phones while driving. Van Erp, who lost his father to a drunk driver as a child, has got 1,400 motorists in trouble with the law, costing them £110,000 in fines.

In the Sunday Times profile, Nick Rufford comments that: ‘“Cycling Mikey” divides opinion in a way that’s stark even by social media’s standards. To some he’s a fearless campaigner, posting videos to YouTube that make Britain’s roads safer and inspire dozens of other camera-wielding cyclists in cities across the country to bring dangerous drivers to justice. To others he’s a self-righteous snooper (they were in a traffic jam!) and the most hated cyclist in Britain.’

That’s true, and while my instinctive sympathy is with the man trying to deter people behaving irresponsibly in two-ton killing machines, I can appreciate why he and other cyclists infuriate people. 

Which is a shame, since cyclists are essentially right, in the sense that the evidence suggests that society benefits overall if we promote cycling in cities at the expense of cars. Driving is useful and in rural areas a necessity, but cities are very unsuited to cars, with all their attendant negative externalities. This is something the Dutch and Danes have long understood, which is why Copenhagen and Amsterdam are obvious inspirations for London. 

In the Netherlands almost everyone cycles, including 90 per cent of children travelling to school (where cycling lessons are on the curriculum), and most cities are bike-dominated. The Dutch are also the most physically active people in Europe, and have the happiest adolescents, while Britain has the most miserable.

I wouldn’t claim to have any particular knowledge of that fashionable and complicated topic, ‘mental health’, but I’ve been struck on so many occasions that people suffering persistent low mood often never exercise, even though the link between physical activity and mental wellbeing is straightforward and obvious. I suspect that if we enabled teenagers to cycle in far greater numbers, by building more segregated cycle lanes, that would take out a considerable chunk of the ‘mental health crisis’ far more effectively than endlessly blathering about the subject.

London wasn’t alway this car-dominated; indeed it had segregated cycling lanes as far back as 1934, only to be removed in the 1950s when the city authorities developed a mania for cars and motorways. Unsurprisingly by the end of the century cycling here had become absurdly dangerous, as illustrated by the video here (at 2min 35) aimed at promoting the activity. 

Things have improved since, especially when it comes to safety. I first commuted routinely from around 2001, when things began to change under Mayor Ken Livingstone (the real creator of the ‘Boris Bike’). Since then there has been a 155 per cent increase in bicycle journeys across the capital, and as of this year, cyclists now outnumber motorists in the City of London.

In countries where cycling is safe and normalised, cyclists tend to be seen as the public at large, rather than a strange and perverted subculture and the object of disdain. Why can’t we just be accepted as normal people, I wonder, waking up at the crack of dawn to slide into my tight-fitting Lycra mankini?

It is often argued that London is not ‘designed’ for bike use, and yet both Amsterdam and Copenhagen were once heavily car-dominated too. After the Second World War bike use in the Danish capital fell to around a quarter of today’s total, and cars were given the priority they have long enjoyed in the English-speaking world. The Danes realised early that cars tend to kill civic life, and so moved towards encouraging cycling instead; car-free days were introduced and parking spaces removed.

Amsterdam’s story was similar: by the early 1970s the city was car-choked, by which point road deaths had tripled in just 20 years, provoking a campaign group called Stop de Kindermoord (Stop the Child Murder), led by the mothers of children killed by cars. As segregated lanes were put up, bicycle use increased and road traffic fatalities hugely declined - and they are now around a tenth of 1970s levels.

One reason I feel that Conservatives are misguided in opposing traffic-reducing measures is that, once enacted, no one will ever want to go back. These issues won’t become running sores of the culture wars, like gender, immigration or criminal justice reform; once the initial pain and cost is paid, it’s done. There is no non-smug way of putting this, but life is so much better on two wheels and two feet.