I have been writing for road.cc for the last 15 years, and in that time I have dedicated a lot of my energy towards advancing cycling safety and cyclists’ rights. That’s because the numbers speak for themselves: cyclists are vulnerable road users, we are killed at a higher rate than most other groups, and we have a ridiculous amount of hate thrown at us too.
Now, while I still believe in promoting cycling and defending our right to use the road whenever possible, I admit that I have started to become more of a realist since I’ve been forced into my car more after moving to rural Warwickshire. Most cyclists are safe, considerate, and polite, but I think we need to acknowledge that some people are arseholes, whether they’re behind the wheel or behind a handlebar.
A couple of weekends ago, I was in West Sussex for a short break. It was a Friday morning in the school holidays, so we decided to go to West Wittering Beach, which is about an hour from where we were staying. After Chichester, there is one long, straight road with a single carriageway on both sides. As I turned onto this road, there was somebody on what looked like a Colnago Master in front of the car that was three ahead of me. As we were driving south, a constant flow of northbound traffic meant there was no chance of safely overtaking the cyclist. Luckily, nobody tried to squeeze through.
Now, this road is about five miles long and typically takes around 10 minutes to drive – however, the guy refused to move into the bike lane (which admittedly was just some painted lines, so it might not have been possible to pass at a safe distance) or pull into one of the many driveways, laybys etc on the way, meaning that stretch of road instead took me 25 minutes to drive. As I mentioned, I was three cars back, but I lost count of how many were behind me after a while.
Of course, legally the guy did not have to pull over. Nobody was tailgating in a dangerous attempt to ‘force’ him to pull over, but in my opinion, what he did was the equivalent of not holding a door for somebody, or not saying thanks to somebody for waiting. Technically he did nothing wrong, but quite a few people in that queue will have driven away thinking that person was an arsehole – around 30 drivers plus some of their passengers having their cognitive bias against cyclists reinforced.
The guy on the Colnago could have been driving a tractor, riding a horse, or any other mode of transport – but he happened to be on a bike. Arseholes exist in every walk of life, and I think as cyclists, we need to add nuance into our conversation, because some people are arseholes and their actions should not be defended. Equally, their actions should not reflect on anybody else in their group.
It’s not like this is a new concept amongst drivers in particular. Nobody in their right mind would claim that because one person is driving like an arsehole, that automatically means that all drivers are arseholes.
This thought distortion goes some way to explain why conviction rates for drivers who kill diverge so much depending on the victim’s mode of transport. A 2014 Freedom of Information request from the BBC uncovered that 65% of killer drivers are found guilty if they caused the death of another driver, versus only 44% if they killed a cyclist. People are more able to define bad apples in a group they’re a part of, and 75% of the UK adult population drive compared to just 10% of adults who ride. It’s no wonder they struggle to see that an individual cyclist can be an arsehole rather than all cyclists collectively.
So, I want us to agree that some cyclists can be arseholes, and to say loud and proud that the person who kept me stuck in a car with two young children – being forced to listen to Hey Duggee over and over for 15 minutes longer than I needed to – was being an arsehole, regardless of their mode of transport.
5 thoughts on “Sometimes, cyclists can be a**eholes too — and it’s OK to say that”
George, I could literally have written that article myself. Chapeau Sir!
Spot on!
Ah, that’s where you lose everyone, particularly when the group is an out-group / they’re “other”.
I’m not quite clear on this phrase and how it relates to the statistics. Does this mean “we have more sympathy for other members of a group we’re part of?”
Don’t those rates just show that we don’t care so much about those outside of our group? (As the “bad apples” are in the same group – motorists – in both examples?)
Or is it that this is motornormativity: vulnerable road users are seen to be annoyances, contributing to their own misfortune? Or at least we sympathise with the killers as people not in cars are hard to spot and they don’t behave like drivers?
We do, but…
…simply making progress along the road at your own pace is not being an arsehole. The argument that he could simply “move into … one of the many driveways, laybys etc” hides a couple of false assumptions – that this would be essentially cost free for him (whereas in fact stopping and starting requires much more effort on a bike than in a car), and that it would be a one-off (whereas if the road is busy enough for a queue of 30 cars to build up he’d likely be stopping every couple of minutes to let people past. Or, alternatively, that all that cost to him is worth less than the 15 minutes extra it took to drive (7.5 minutes on average per car), which sounds pretty selfish on the part of the driver.
@mdavidford I think you’re misunderstanding societal norms and courtesies.
Firstly, you are de facto claiming that the road was completely pan flat because, if it wasn’t, stopping causes *zero* inconvenience to the cyclist in terms of energy expenditure (as they can just do a rolling start) and costs a few seconds of time. It seems strikingly unreasonable to assume that a few seconds of the cyclist’s time is worth (cumulatively) hours of everyone else’s.
Secondly, George has already kindly pointed out that there was, in fact, a cycle lane that could have been used, but instead the cyclist chose to ride in such a position that no one could safely get past. If the cyclist had merely moved to the left for even a few seconds, the bottleneck he’d created would have been relieved.
Finally, and perhaps slightly more controversially, it’s revealed that the cyclist was riding a Colnago Master. This is a vintage bike dating back decades, and certainly not the kind of machine that would be suitable for commuting or utilitarian cycling. I think it’s tentatively safe to say, therefore, that the cyclist wasn’t engaged in a meaningful journey and was economically inactive, holding up purposeful travellers and negatively disrupting the local economy.
Just my tuppence worth.