When I was starting out as a journalist, I was lucky enough to get work experience at the Times during the week of the G20 protests. It was my first ever week in a newsroom, and I looked like a student (because I was one).

Naturally, this meant I was sent to anarchist bookshops, because nobody else in the newsroom at the time would have fitted in. I then went out onto the streets for the protests themselves to get the inside scoop, managed to get kettled alongside a now-cancelled celebrity, then went to the pub afterwards to debrief the team about it. 

This was in my first week of a 1-month work placement. 

Now, I don’t want to suggest that journalism has changed for the worse; but when the Daily Mail sends a writer with considerably more experience than student George to point speed guns at cyclists in a London Park, you can perhaps forgive me for thinking that the game’s gone.

> Speed gun deployed to fine cyclists riding faster than 12mph in London park

The Mail hasn’t just done this on a whim. There is a trend amongst certain media outlets to assume their readers are thickos, then pump them full of nonsense to create a self-fulfilling thicko prophecy. The latest targets are cyclists, and in particular, that they’re going too fast! 

Let’s be clear, this is another classic case of certain media publications posting ragebait about a group of people that are visible, but generally don’t have a voice. There aren’t many people who are cycling advocates with the same reach as the Mail or the Express, so these rags get to push their anti-cycling agenda regardless of the facts that torpedo the points they’re trying to make. 

When you look at what the author wrote, anybody with two brain cells should be able to see it for what it is:

“The Daily Mail has found that scores of cyclists are flagrantly ignoring 12mph speed limits in a popular London park – some breaking the limit by up to 7mph.

“A cyclist has already been fined £50 for speeding in Tooting Common in South West London for going 16mph in the 12mph zone, but this fine was rescinded when he challenged Wandsworth Council.

“While Daily Mail was at the park for two hours with a speed gun, we recorded more than 20 cyclists breaking the limit, with the fastest going 19mph – nearly 60per cent over the limit.”

So first off, the most flagrant example of breaking the limit they could find is 7mph over the 12mph limit. For posterity, 7mph is the same speed as a light jog. It’s the equivalent of somebody doing roughly 45 in a 30 while driving; which would indeed be speeding and absolutely should never be condoned, but that’s the very worst example they could find. 

The second paragraph then goes on to say that somebody was fined, but then it becomes clear that the fine was rescinded. So if they were being accurate, it would read: ‘nobody has been fined’.

In the third paragraph, the writer talks about how he recorded 20 cyclists going over the limit. This is problematic because in the accompanying video, there are several examples of 13mph being shown, which is within the +2mph margin of error for speed guns used in perfect conditions, but would be included within those 20 recorded instances.

The video, unsurprisingly, shows far from perfect conditions. There is also a fairly significant omission, which is the total number of cyclists seen in those two hours. This is one of the most popular parks in South West London, and on most routes from South East London to Richmond Park, so there were more than likely hundreds of cyclists coming through at this time. 

If you were to rewrite these paragraphs truthfully, I reckon they would read something like: “The Daily Mail has found that some cyclists are exceeding an unenforceable speed limit by as much as a light jog.

“A cyclist has already shown that this is unenforceable when, as the only person to have received a fine, it was almost instantly rescinded by Wandsworth Council.

“While the Daily Mail was at the park for two hours with a speed gun, we recorded only 20 cyclists breaking the limit out of the hundreds we saw, with the fastest going 19mph – a full 1mph lower than the lowest speed limit on a public road.”

What annoys me about this article is that the Mail know what they’re doing, because they have attempted to frame it as a question: “Are cyclists REALLY ignoring the speed limit… or are dog walkers telling porkies? Speedometer reveals whether riders have turned Tooting Common into a ‘motorway’ by breaking 12mph limit”. 

However, in a quick analysis of this article I counted 43 paragraphs, of which only two talk about this not being an issue at all. A 21.5/1 bollocks ratio.

This kind of nonsense journalism isn’t just coming from nationals; we have it coming from locals too. The Oxford Mail picked up on the non-enforceable speed limit and ran with it in their own article: ‘Oxford cyclists speeding on 20mph roads as fine calls made’.

For this one, they relied on unverified reports of a bloke who says a bike overtook him on a 20mph road. Another bloke said a e-bike went past him at 45mph, 27mph above the speed at which a legal e-bike can move with assistance in the UK… so I assume what he actually meant was that a motorbike overtook him. 

Another interesting quote comes from one Carole Hetherington, who appears to live in a small village nearly an hour away from Oxford. She claims: “I was knocked over by a bike while crossing by Boswells [of Oxford] at the lights. A cyclist came up the inside of a bus stopped and collided with me.

“I couldn’t see them nor they see me. If that was a car driver they would have been done for dangerous driving, what’s the difference?”

First off, Boswells shut permanently in 2020, so that doesn’t seem to be a contemporary story. Secondly, if a car driver had done the same thing, Carole probably wouldn’t be here to give a quote, like the roughly 1,700 people killed by car drivers every year. 

Unfortunately, we live in an age where basic critical thinking is abandoned for emotional confirmation bias, especially when it comes to anything where the ‘other’ can be portrayed as dangerous or threatening. Cyclists are seen as an ‘other’ in the UK today, which manifests itself in nonsense journalism like this.

Of the top 10 articles in the Oxford Mail this week, four relate to drivers killing people, while readily available figures show that the average number of people killed by cyclists in Oxford over the last 10 years is… 0.

You do the maths.