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news
Cyclist in traffic (copyright Simon MacMichael)“The day cyclists took over the roads”: The Times, Darren Grimes and TikTok react as new Highway Code revisions come into force this weekend
Revisions to the Highway Code aimed at protecting vulnerable road users came into force this weekend – and some news outlets have marked the occasion by calling for the changes to be scrapped and declaring a ‘battle of the Highway Code’ on Britain’s roads.
The updated Highway Code includes not only the laws that road users are required to follow but also contains advice aimed at improving safety. A new hierarchy of road users has been introduced, where the most dangerous road users carry the greatest responsibility for the safety of the most vulnerable, with pedestrians at the top of this hierarchy followed by cyclists.
Other updates include advice for cyclists in certain situations (such as riding in the middle of their lane to increase visibility on quiet roads, in slower-moving traffic, and when approaching junctions), giving priority to pedestrians at junctions, and encouraging the adoption of the ‘Dutch Reach’ method of opening car doors.
> Highway Code changes: ‘What about cyclists, or do the rules not apply to them?’
Despite the new Highway Code’s focus on the safety of all road users, some media outlets and commentators predicted “carnage” under the new rules.
This stance has not softened since the changes were introduced on Saturday. In two articles titled “The day cyclists took over the roads” and “Battle of the Highway Code”, the Mail Online claimed that since the new rules were brought in, cyclists have been “deliberately hogging the centre of the road, causing pile-ups of traffic behind them”.
The Mail again misleadingly referred to cyclists “taking to the middle of the road and riding two-abreast” with drivers “powerless to stop them under the new Highway Code”. This claim has been rebuffed by groups such as Cycling UK, who emphasise that bike riders are asked to ride in the centre of their lane in certain situations, not the middle of the road.
> Press misrepresents Highway Code changes – just days before they come into force
The site also prominently shared a tweet which claimed that a group of cyclists “refused to let cars past for eight miles looking back and laughing”.
As we reported on Friday, the Times responded to the incoming revisions by calling for cyclists to be licensed and insured, almost 10 years to the day since the newspaper launched an award-winning campaign to make Britain’s roads safer for people on bikes. The paper also appealed for a new offence of death by dangerous cycling to be introduced, under the headline "Killer cyclists may be classed like motorists".
Beyond the written press, the changes were featured on a particularly embarrassing segment on GB News yesterday, hosted by conservative political commentator Darren Grimes.
Grimes said that the new hierarchy featured “pedestrians and cyclists at the very top” before adding “I don’t need to tell you where motorists end up” (the presenter, hosting his first show on the channel, neglected to mention that van and lorry drivers bear more responsibility for car drivers and motorcyclists under the updated guidance).
He also criticised what he said was the overt emphasis on dangerous drivers under the new rules, claiming that in London “you’re lucky if you get away with your life with cyclists storming down the road so fast”, despite cyclists being involved in four of the 346 incidents which resulted in the death of a pedestrian in 2020.
> Grant Shapps calls for new ‘death by dangerous cycling’ law
Grimes was joined on the programme by Fair Fuel UK’s Howard Cox, a prominent opponent of the new Highway Code, who described the changes as “a cyclist’s charter” and said that the updates permitted bike riders “to cycle in any way they wish, no matter how dangerous, without fear of prosecution.”
Cox continued: “They have been given the right to pass all the blame to other road users. They are innocent no matter what they do, and this can’t be right. I believe this Highway Code will actually lead to more injuries and more deaths.”
Despite Cox’s criticism of the changes, he called for the updates to “be sent to every household in this country”.
“This Highway Code assumes all drivers are homicidal maniacs, and that is completely and utterly unjust,” he said.
While Cox adamantly defended the “law-abided majority” of motorists, one TikTok user was criticised over the weekend for claiming that the new rules meant that she was inevitably “going to hurt people”.
Chantelle Bradd, a model from Bristol, posted a video on the social media platform in which she argued that the new Highway Code was part of the government’s attempt “to de-populate us”.
Give up your licence. pic.twitter.com/mBV9pkCWWu
— put it in the bin (@photogog) January 30, 2022
In the video (which contains copious amounts of swearing), she said: “I’m a new driver, so I don’t know how I’m even going to deal with driving through the centre of Bristol, because bikes now can be on either side of you, and you have to give way to them.
“They don’t have to use the cycle lanes, which our councils have spent maybe millions of pounds on. They can opt to be in the centre of the road instead, they can ride two-abreast in the middle of the road, so they’re definitely going to be making you late for work in the morning. Why have you done this?
“People are going to get hurt,” she continued. “I am going to hurt people. I’m going to be responsible for hitting Maisie with her little helmet going to school. I’m going to t**t her off her bike in the morning because of this. Why?”
Yesterday, Cycling UK called for a long-term public awareness campaign from the government to help produce a “mindset shift” on British roads and to counteract misleading reports in the media. The charity says it will take years to fully enforce the revisions and change “entrenched driving behaviour”.
“The latest changes to the Highway Code are a hugely important start towards a mindset shift that will make the roads safer for everyone – not just for people who choose to cycle or walk,” Cycling UK’s head of campaigns Duncan Dollimore said.
“The changes in our driving behaviour, however, will only happen if the government commits to communicating them with simple, accurate, and memorable messaging in the long term.
“We’ve seen the public’s attitude shift on seat belt use and drink driving. This shows entrenched driving behaviour can change. The new Highway Code requires a similar shift, and it can happen again but not overnight.
“To make our roads safer for everyone, the government must be looking in terms of years not months to communicate and eventually enforce these changes.”
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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104 comments
Going by media input, it would appear that those on the left are pro cycling and those on the right are anti cycling; I'd be interested in a debate on why this is so.
I think it's just the ones shouting the loudest thankfully.
Left v Right might be oversimplification ir lead to polarisation or lazy use of stereotypes.
Perhaps consider democratisation v authoritarianism? This piece by Julian Sayerer from 2017 is an interesting read:
https://www.howwegettonext.com/the-most-subversive-way-to-travel/
His chat on Carlton Reid's podcast about his experiences in Israel/Palestine was quite an eye-opener too.
You don't have to be 'right wing' to be anti-cycling, just believe the diatribes in the MSM, add in some fake outrage from social media and you can easily become a hardened cyclist-hater. It's what they have been doing to other out-groups for centuries.
Ooh is it multi-dimensional graph time again (from https://electowiki.org/wiki/Political_spectrum)?
Agreed. I'm right wing, but don't feel the highway code changes go far enough in the cyclist's favour. And quite frankly the media fuelling the war on the roads need fining each time they do it...There's reporting news, and there's manufacturing it...
Have you read his book about cycling in Israel and Palestine?
Yep. Very much agree with this.
"I was stuck behind this cyclist for hours" claimed Sophie from Swindon "Waving my arms around and he just grinned."
The refusal to let cars overtake for 8 miles- where to start with that?
at 15mph average speed it would take 32 minutes to cover that distance. Who the heck wants a car behind them for half an hour?
I once had a driver behind me for over two minutes. She was well back, there were plenty of opportunities to pass (the road in the industrial park is so wide she could have passed me safely without crossing the center) and I even tried waving her past twice. "What a nice driver" I thought, even though I'd have preferred it if she passed me.
As I turned at the next light, she pulled alongside me, rolled down her window, and, face livid, shouted "you need to find a bike lane."
The road she refused to pass me on is officially part of my city's bike network, and is signposted as such. The only reason for a motorist to use it is to bypass two traffic lights. I told her what I thought she needed to do.
That anecdote tweet no doubt originated from a troll stirring the pot.. anyone in the media that takes notice of an unverifiable piece of nonsense is a clown.
that Chantelle is a little charmer. And bright as a button too.
her social class is higher than her IQ..
Excellent (as usual) piece in the Guardian by Peter Walker on the Times editorial:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2022/jan/31/the-times-...
The article is not helped by some unfortunate errors.
Firstly they point out that car drivers cause greater numbers of injuries than do than cyclists, without reference to the huge disparity in numbers of cars versus bicycles on the road.
Secondly they venture into GCSE physics and kinetic energy, with the erroneous understanding that in a collision between two objects the one "imparts" all its kinetic energy to the other.
We need articles from the MSM friendly towards cyclists, but they need to be well argued. If they are going to accuse the other side of "intellectual howlers" they'd do well to up their own game first.
I'm trying to track down some stats on RLJ related injuries, did you post something in a thread a few weeks ago?
Can't unfortunately find it on a Google search and no decent road.cc search function but seem to remember it was you who posted it originally?
I think that might be an entirely made-up story.
"No Strava or it did happen" said an angry motorist.
Agreed. The guy was some bigwig, so simply not credible that he did not have the alleged episode on dash-cam - otherwise he would have posted it, no?
Say it ain't so......
Coming into the office this morning, I think I was generally passed better than usual by most motorists.
(That being, said, someone had reversed a large flatbed van up so it could park on the pavement and protected cycle lane on Park Row westbound...).
I would agree the “law-abided majority” are probably more aware of how to overtake carefully. Bad drivers (little old man that passed me right before a pinch point and I followed him down the hill to watch him roll through a STOP sign) are still bad drivers and aggresive idiots now feel even more emboldened to be hostile (that's on the press not the changes to the HC)
Saturday morning I was overtaken on the Sheepway outside of Portishead, by a big white range rover on a blind (high hedges) left curve on the approach to a hump-back bridge. The driver had to swing in sharpish just past me, to avoid going head-on with a double-decker bus (which they'd clearly not been able to see, but neither had I). So it's not all good.
I think that's my argument. That could/would have happened regardless of the changes to the HC. If a few of the “law-abided majority” are already making better decisions as a result of the changes and further awareness campaigns increase that number that's realistically the best anybody could have hoped for. Bad drivers will still drive badly and haters will still hate.
Interestingly, and I'm sure many will concur, I had several questions about the changes from co-workers last week. It's not surprising that many of my answers involved telling them what the "old" HC said.
That sort of thing happens every ride in Surrey. Multiple times. Did before the HC changes and will continue to do so. Crap, selfish, irresponsible, dangerous drivers aren't going to be reading it.
'large flatbed van'.. that would seem to be a contradiction in term there.
Large flat bed vans are the ones right at the 3.5 t limit which will allow somebody with a B classification to drive. It saves the employer having to pay a higher wage. You can get mini and midi size which are mainly Japanese models. The larger ones tend to be Ford, VW etc.
A flatbed lorry with a crew cab (ie. driver-plus-passenger plus a back seat for further passengers). Not an HGV, but not a little van either. I'm sorry, but I didn't get a note of the VIN.
Strangely I've noticed that Cardiff taxis are now amongst the most courteous of road users.
This has not always been the case.
The biggest taxi firm in Cardiff has also recently introduced internal and external dash cams.
I know correlation is not causation but...
Meanwhile, some common sense about the new HC rules from Mike Rutherford in Auto Express, which may be surprising as he's a petrolhead par excellence. Cycling barely makes a mention in his article:
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/opinion/357214/get-familiar-new-highway-co...
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