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Chris Hoy hits out at “stupid” cyclists

“If you want respect you have to earn it,” says multiple Olympic medalist

Multiple Olympic gold medal winner Chris Hoy has emerged as one of Britain’s most vocal advocates for cycling. But he believes that some cyclists are doing the cause no good by their behaviour on the roads.

“When I’m out on a bike and I see someone doing something stupid I will absolutely have a word with them at the next set of lights,” he told the Telegraph’s Theo Merz in an interview.

Hoy gave a recent example, of a rider he’d chastised while in his home town of Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago.

He said: “There was a guy who was riding like an idiot, jumping lights, cutting up the pavement, and I just said: ‘You’re not helping matters here. If you want respect you have to earn it.’”

The response was stunned silence, perhaps at being told off by Scotland’s most famous cyclist, perhaps in amazement that someone had nothing better to do than police the behaviour of other cyclists.

Since retiring in 2013, Hoy has been developing his own bike brand with Evans Cycles, promoting family cycling, confusing football fans on Twitter who think he's a referee, and recently announced plans to get into car racing.

But he says cycling still matters to him and that’s why he gets annoyed with behaviour that, as he sees it, affects the perception of cyclists. He still wants to see more people on bikes.

“There are so many benefits to cycling,” he said. “It eases congestion, there are social benefits if you do it with someone else and of course there are the health benefits. It improves your cardiovascular system and you lose body fat.

“It’s particularly good if you haven’t exercised for a number of years. If you’re trying to run for the first time it puts strain on your joints, or people can have injuries that prevent them from doing that. But cycling is low impact, it’s easy for anyone at any level and it doesn’t have to be expensive.”

Hoy says he still gets out on the bike too.

“I still go cycling at least four times a week though,” he said. “Sometimes it’s to test models for my range and sometimes it’s purely for my own well-being. If I’m preaching about the benefits of exercise I can’t let myself go – and I wouldn’t want to.”

And of course, if he doesn’t ride, he doesn’t get to tell off those naughty red-light-jumpers.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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134 comments

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Quince replied to velovoice | 9 years ago
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velovoice wrote:

Excellent response here: http://helenblackman.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/chris-hoy-cycling-and-the-...

It seems one famous cyclist named Chris "gets it"... but the other doesn't.

Thank you for the article. That was a strong piece of writing.

As someone has said, there can definitely be an element of Stockholm Syndrome about the whole relationship.

Given the one-way anonymity, power-imbalance, and supposed authority with which a car is driven ("road tax", sticking within social boundaries etc.), I think there's also a strong element of the Milgram Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) to the whole thing as well. From a motorists perspective, cyclists are small, weak, in a separate, dislocated environment, and breaking social norms, and breaking the law (e.g. in not paying "road tax" [despite it not existing], and in 'always' running red lights [despite it being statistically much less frequent than obeying them]).

The one-way anonymity, separate environment, power-imbalance, and 'conformity to a supposed authority' are the four elements that fundamentally define the Milgram Experiment, and I think they're all present in the Motorist/Cyclist relationship and typical environment; the weakest link being the 'authority' one, but that may explain why people are so keen to make claims about "road tax" and red light lumping, despite them being realistically minor or non-existant issues.

I've yet to see someone write a really solid piece of literature or study about the Milgram effect in the Motorist/Cyclist relationship. In fact, I've yet to see anyone write anything about it at all, which seems a waste, as I can't help but feel it's a highly significant factor in why a large number of seemingly ordinary people around the world seem to have no qualms about posting their desire to murder other humans beings over social networks, simply because those human beings are using a different form of transport. The crux of the Milgram Effect is that is severs relationship and responsibility between ordinary people with different levels of inherent power and vulnerability. This is exactly seems to be happening out on the roads every single day.

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SB76 replied to kcr | 9 years ago
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kcr wrote:
Quote:

All very interesting but what's that got to do with Hoy's comments?

He's talking about idiot cyclists, not idiot drivers.

The point is that a number of people are suggesting, on the back of Hoy's comments, that cyclists need to "earn" respect. I've posted a few examples of evidence that demonstrates how some motorists are responsible for significant harm on our roads. Despite this death and injury, we don't tend to hear people saying motorists need to earn respect.

In fact, no one has to earn the right for their safety to be respected. As I described above, I was run down while I was cycling on a segregated cycle path. I don't think the behaviour of that driver changes my responsibility to respect the safety of other motorists and cyclists that I encounter.

You are correct, on the thread, I've stated we need to earn respect. That phrase isn't necessarily what I mean and perhaps not what most mean.
What I mean is to treat everyone how you expect to be treated. Hopefully by setting an example you gain more respect for both yourself and cyclists. By this I mean that a driver might be forced to question their prejudice! I sill expect all cyclists and drivers to abide by the laws allowing for the fact we are human and all make mistakes.
Of course, I am aware that sadly the real world isn't like this but I still hope to abide by the rules and not react by becoming a worse cyclist in response to the idiots.

Of course

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FluffyKittenofT... | 9 years ago
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Chris's need to earn respect!

Before people called "Chris" start giving opinions they need to put their house in order and stop beating up Rihanna. Not to mention cutting legal aid budgets. And inflicting horrors like Lady In Red on an innocent public.

Sort yourselves out, Chris's!

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FluffyKittenofT... | 9 years ago
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PS - he's perfectly entitled to chastise individuals he happens to see doing something anti-social. No problem with that. I just will never buy the 'earn respect' nonsense.

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noether | 9 years ago
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An interesting comment by Helen Blackman. Road rage against cyclists in the UK is partly due to the perception that cyclists transgress normality, meaning using a car, and therefore question consumerist lifestyle. I never saw myself as such, on the contrary my bling bike and gear betray unashamed consumerism. I do advocate cycling and electric cycling as health and life style improving habits. Which falls on deaf ears. And my friends laugh when I dress in "tights".

Attitudes will only change when motorists themselves become cyclists. When they discover the pleasure of gliding to destination under one's own traction but also the terror of having to share the road with nutters in their killing machines. UK roads will only become safer for cyclists when cycling becomes so commonplace that it loses its elitist? righteous? stigma. Like in Holland or Denmark.

In the meantime, UK roads remain lethal. Cyclists should treat them with respect, the respect reserved for a big wild cat, ready to pounce at any moment: keep your distances, have a plan B at all times, approach vigilantly. For me, that also includes cycling through red when there is no traffic in sight rather than wait for green and be bolted by a miscalculating truck.

This is the respect Hoy should be promoting, the instinct of self preservation expressed through great caution. But he cannot, can he? Next best is to get as many drivers onto bikes as he can in as short a time as possible.

He better keep his comments about an incidental rogue cyclist to himself, it only fuels stigmatization.

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carlosjenno | 9 years ago
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Reading through some of these posts, there's a theme that motorists hate cyclists because cyclists slow them down. I can't disagree more. When I'm in my car or on my motorcycle, I'm rarely slowed down by cyclists. It simply doesn't happen. However, when I'm cycling, I'm regularly slowed down by cars, vans, lorries and buses. They're constantly in my way (Strava's got a lot to answer for) but I'm not trying to kick wing mirrors off or put windows through because of it. I'm too busy trying to stay alive due to drivers of motorised vehicles driving them very very poorly. It's nothing to do with what you're driving or riding, it's all about your attitude and the ability to operate your chosen vehicle.

And FWIW, there's always a case to argue for a cyclist running certain red lights. Occasionally, it benefits everyone, but that's an argument for another time. Pavement jumping (pavement riding full stop is a pet hate of mine) is an absolute no-no though, it's simply unnecessary.

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Internet Pawn | 9 years ago
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It strikes me that there is a difference in perception here. Chris Hoy seems to me to be commenting on the world as it is now, while those disagreeing with him are commenting on the world as it should be. It's true every road user has a right to be treated with respect by every other road user, but today the reality is that we don't get it always. There are a significant number of motorists who do use the poor behaviour of some cyclists to justify their own bad behaviour and what this means is that the actions of some cyclists do indirectly put the rest of us in danger.

No matter how neanderthal the views of these motorists are, if reducing the number of RLJing cyclists will make the roads safer for the rest of us (and I think it would) then I'm fully behind Chris Hoy.

Meanwhile, nothing that he has said suggests he agrees with the motorists who use this as an excuse to treat cyclists poorly. To get from where we are today to the environment we would all like to see means that some things have to change. If exchanging words with an aberrant cyclist helps us get there then I'm in. Ditto for an aberrant motorist (although I'm less convinced about our ability to change the minds of dangerous drivers).

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snifter83 replied to harrybav | 9 years ago
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vbvb wrote:

You have to earn not being killed?

Chris is a medal-winning sportsman, great, but he's quite a conservative guy, framing the debate in his Edinburgh circa 1983 way, might not know much about European infrastructure others are pushing for. He's out of his depth, makes Boardman look pretty smooth.

He could do worse than read an hour or two of http://www.copenhagenize.com/

Come on man, read the article. He told someone off for jumping lights and riding on the pavement. I agree with him. I live in Edinburgh and generally, motorists are pretty accommodating to cyclists (as they should be). However, when you get twits treating the streets like a race track or playground it irritates people - and I personally don't wish to share the road with an irritated driver.

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spin sugar | 9 years ago
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Whilst it seems he thinks that the gist of what he was saying is reflected, Chris did comment on twitter that some of his quotes had been shortened in the interview, some points he made didn't make it in and he wasn't keen on the headline.

Whatever the case, I'm still much more narked off by the fact that the Telegraph continues to post recreational (for want of a better word - I mean other than pro stuff that would appear in the Sport section) cycling articles and features in the "Men" section of the paper. Apparently they still think it's not for the ladies. THANKS GUYS.

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700c | 9 years ago
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Depressing the number of commentators here (including the author of this article?) always need to frame these debates in terms of cars vs cyclists, as though the two groups are diametrically opposed. as though it's a war, and if you stick up for one group you 'hate', or are 'anti' the other.

Most people on here are probably both driver and cyclist so unless road cc wants to alienate most of it's readership I suggest it takes a look at how some of it's stories are phrased.

If it turns into a militant, biased site which can only ever see issues with blinkers on, it will put off the people it's trying to engage with (you know, the affluent ones who are likely to buy the products advertised on here, the revenue from which keeps the site going..)

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Ush replied to 700c | 9 years ago
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700c wrote:

... put off the people it's trying to engage with (you know, the affluent ones who are likely to buy the products advertised on here, the revenue from which keeps the site going..)

That's an interesting prejudice you have there.

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northstar | 9 years ago
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What are these "cars" you speak of?

You mean "drivers" vs "cyclists".

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FluffyKittenofT... replied to 700c | 9 years ago
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700c wrote:

Depressing the number of commentators here (including the author of this article?) always need to frame these debates in terms of cars vs cyclists, as though the two groups are diametrically opposed. as though it's a war, and if you stick up for one group you 'hate', or are 'anti' the other.

Most people on here are probably both driver and cyclist so unless road cc wants to alienate most of it's readership I suggest it takes a look at how some of it's stories are phrased.

If it turns into a militant, biased site which can only ever see issues with blinkers on, it will put off the people it's trying to engage with (you know, the affluent ones who are likely to buy the products advertised on here, the revenue from which keeps the site going..)

Of course, those who just accept the dominant prejudices have their own biases, even as they convince themselves its only those 'militants' who disagree with them who are 'biased'.

Your allusion to the illusion of 'free speech' (its never free it costs money and the views of those with money tend to dominate) is interesting, but its not exactly a logical or moral argument is it? Its just another form of 'might is right'.

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thehairs1970 replied to ronin | 9 years ago
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The last time I checked, cyclists are humans, just like motorists. Compared to a car, the human on a bike will always be in the worse position. Many idiot humans in cars disregard the life of a human on a bike (I was nearly taken out three times on one 28 mile ride).

Why do some cyclists believe that as they do less damage than a car it allows them to disobey rules? "I was nearly taken out 3 times on a 28mile ride." Only nearly though. So shouldn't the drivers of the cars be let off. After all, they didn't hit you. Of course not. Just because someone does no or little damage does not excuse their behaviour, not car driver, HGV driver or cyclist.

Yes, you might end up dead after following the rules. In that case, flout them all. Drive without a seatbelt, motorcycle without a helmet, smoke while filling your car up, run across level crossing when the barriers are down.

Come on Ronin. We ALL, regardless of form of transport, need to behave responsibly and treat others with respect too.

I say 'Well done' to Chris Hoy.

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