"Those who don't see themselves may feel cycling is not for them": Images of cyclists lack diversity and focus on cycling as leisure rather than transport, researchers suggest

I think it's been a problem for about a century and will remain a problem as long as race mentality dominates.  Even for cycling enthusiasts who go for hours long rides for fun, most of their journeys are practical commutes etc.  Big cycling firm marketing is lead by Tour races - which is, in turn, is lead by the anachronistic UCI rules. Perhaps they should be even more restrictive and insist every part of the race (including time trials) be done on the same bike (allowing copies as spares in case of accidents) - a real touring cyclist won't have different kit every day.

Electric assist bikes are leveraging a different view which will hopefully widen focus of "normal" bikes too.  

I suppose there may be some truth in this, however, one needs to remember that cyclists are generally practical people and unlikely to be unduly swayed by image issues. For those that are not predjudiced by 'the image'; the barriers against joining us are cost, their fitness, and whether the have ever or can rid a bike, to the uninitiated these are the mountains they have to climb before they decide. Maybe a broader spectrum image would help, who knows?

Reading this story, it's worth noting:

1 - The TFL stats have been showing significant proportional increases in women / ethnic minorities cycling over several years. But still low absolute numbers.

2 - Wheels for Wellbeing have a free library of inclusive cycling images, published in 2023 and funded by Active Travel England.

This page, "Photobank of Disabled Cyclists":
https://wheelsforwellbeing.org.uk/

3 - While I'm at it, the WFW leadership team is, I think, all or nearly all female - which is great.

Maybe they should spend less time behind a screen and more time outside on a bike and there youll see many many different type of people riding bike in the real world.

No mention of the industry's marketing being focussed too heavily to the sports (esp. road racing) sector than utility sector skewing the figures.

It seems like arguing over whether or not search engine results are diverse is missing a bigger issue here. Their prescription to address this is for "authorities and other [presumably cycling] organisations to widen the range of images that they use". Which rather ignores that the images used by those bodies is going to be a drop in the ocean, and likely make stuff all difference to those results.

[Incidentally, if you just search for 'family', the results are maybe marginally more racially diverse, but are still almost all slim, 'photogenic', and don't have physical differences, which rather suggests that this is not particularly a cycling-specific problem.]

I think this is kind of BS talk.

In Netherlands almost everybody cycles. Make cycling infra really attractive, make cycle friendly legal framework for commuters, tax car use accordingly to the overall damages it creates and stop thinking about marketing stuff, a good product needs no marketing.

Although in my area the proportion of "minorities" in the population is much larger than among cyclists, I see more and more of them riding bikes recently, one on top of a local climb last week, some commuters on city or e-bikes, a few food delivery boys, too...  in my street a (slightly colored) LGBT neighbor participates to competitions (and smoke joints at its window), everyone can see how Africans win TdF stages or cause crashes in the Tour du Pays Basque, etc.

Of course the priority of most migrants who come to Europe or America is NOT to ride a bike, they want a nice car and meat on the table... I have even been told that bikes are for little kids.

How can a picture tell us much about whether or not the subject is cycling for leisure vs for transport? Is it the background? I would think the reason they use pretty, rural backgrounds would be that it's more appealing to look at, and easier to get a nice picture out of. Also, car ads do this too.

There's another issue with the distribution (or not) of images of different demographics cycling that is more subtle and possibly worse than just not representing minorities. AI training sets will typically include large sets of internet images (they're free, so companies will use them) and this means that any bias will end up getting encoded in the weightings. As AIs get more and more hype, police forces are likely to get suckered in and start using them for such tasks as traffic policing and the inherent bias will then show up by the AIs discriminating against non-white/non-male cyclists and flagging them for stop and search and the like. This of course will then feed back into official figures and show that minorities on bikes are more likely to be involved in crime (because they've been targetted by the AIs) and so we end up creating a fictitious state of affairs by unthinking use of biased images.

And there's the issue of trained AIs being used to create "new" images which will likely be posted on the internet and further enforce the bias. AI will eat itself.

There is another worrying message in these findings:

"Though no official data for the cycling industry exists at the moment, the report also noted that, anecdotally, Black, Asian, or people from ethnic minorities are underrepresented in the sector, as are individuals from low socio-economic backgrounds or with disabilities. There is also a lack of LGBTQ+ people joining or leading the UK bike industry, the report said."

I suspect that this is partially because members of minorities (that have often suffered from forms of hidden racism or abuse) are trying to blend in, avoiding things that are not mainstream (and may raise criticism from the bullies), trying to be "normal" - as a result of society putting pressure on them to "assimilate"... (This is only my impression, and I only have anecdotal evidence, but if this is true, then the even bigger concern should be about how members of the mentioned minorities are treated than about them cycling less!)

This is another piece of research trying to find a reason for poor uptake in cycling in the UK which finds predominantly white male healthy (skinny if you're doing research from a driving seat) being heterosexual middle class and drinking only cappuccino with almond milk. 

It's nothing to do with psychotic drivers, police indifference, motornormativity, bias in CPS, judges and the motor insurance industry. Nor has it anything to do with a capped 0.001% of the transport budget for well-designed cycle infrastructure since 1890.

Given the quality of this 'research' I'd not brag about, instead actually talk to people who cycle instead of doing an AI farce.

I find the term "family cycling" biased, as it already implies a leisure activity. (Most parents work, kids attend school - so the only time for cycling together is, normally, leisure time.) - However, I can see why they did not search for "cyclist" instead - as this shows people on roadbikes. (Which again may seem fair enough, as these images will be more "symbolic" for a cyclist, more easy to recognize and more distinct than a "housewife locking up her bicycle at the super-market to do the shopping".

It's also worth noting that the level of diversity in the google results may well depend on ones own search history (but this is hard to test unless you compare to friends with a very different background - culture, place, language, ...)

Trying to assess how badly the images found by "family cycling" lack diversity compared to other search results, I searched for "driver". My results showed a "good level" of diversity - but there was another bias, which was quite shocking to me: All these drivers seem to smile - which certainly does not seem to reflect reality - being trapped in a box, in traffic, getting insufficient excercise or fresh air. (It's a bit like car-adverts that always show an impossibly empty road. They are more likely to show a bicycle than even one other car!)

Oh, the grifters have arrived. Don't let them in, keep the door locked shut. They get only paid to divide people and won't stop finding things to divide when their grift depends on it. It's just a bike so just ride it.

Not quite sure what the news is here?

• The demographic mix of UK cyclists doesn't reflect UK society.  Reasons will be complex and may vary for different kinds of cyclists / cycling (e.g. I'd bet there's a positive skew away from "UK origin" in the ethnicity of folks working for the food delivery companies).  There may be less skew in "mass cycling" places e.g. NL rather than the UK.   That might give us a clue as to a good way to address things (not just changing pictures).  There although "locals" cycle more than "immigrants" the latter certainly cycle.  Oh, and uniquely more trips are made by women than men!
• There is bias in images of cyclists - also not news.
• There is bias in images of stuff in the world.  Really not news.

Do the images reflect the realities of who's cycling?  And if not why not?

Being a vanilla dude "I don't know what I don't know" but I can't help feeling there are a couple of more fundamental barriers to cycling... "being able to visualise it" is important, but question:

Just how much would changing the pictures (even if it was to reflect reality better - see the first question) really make a difference to numbers cycling in the UK?

People in the UK give all kinds of reasons why they don't cycle.  Skepticism needed - asking about things people previously haven't considered may get you speculation and confabulation... However the top reason given is likely close to the reality: all kinds of people just don't cycle because it's not "safe" (pleasant) or convenient.  Then: people don't cycle because very few others (of any gender, age or ethnicity) cycle.  Cycling for transport in particular is not perceived as a social activity (and in the UK this is partly by design).  Finally many people have a car, right there, so the question doesn't really arise for many...