Images of cyclists online lack diversity and may potentially contribute to “excluding many people from choosing cycling as an alternative form of transport”, a charity has argued.
The analysis, commissioned by climate charity Possible and first reported by Forbes transport journalist Carlton Reid, saw the University of Westminster’s Active Travel Academy in London look at 100 photos of “family cycling” from Google Images.
In general, it was found that images displayed “implicitly heterosexual-type nuclear families” and “there was a lack of diversity of representation in terms of disability, body size, and ethnicity”, with the majority showing white, slim, non-disabled people riding in the countryside, away from urban areas.
Possible argues the lack of diversity could impact “those who don’t see themselves” from thinking that cycling is for them, potentially “excluding many people from choosing cycling as an alternative form of transport”.
“Those who don’t see themselves in those images or who live in built-up areas may feel as if cycling is not for them because they are not also white, slim, or able-bodied and do not have widespread access to green spaces and calmer roads on which to cycle,” Possible suggested.
The research concludes: “While inevitably limited (and only representing one facet of under-representation), the results are important and should raise concern about the narrowness of some of this representation. Specifically, there is a need for authorities and other organisations to widen the range of images that they use to show ‘family cycling’, which may well include generating and sharing their own images.”
It was also suggested that Active Travel England “could take responsibility for sourcing and sharing a wider variety of such images, including those featuring people with larger bodies, different family structures, and more ethnic minority people cycling in locations that are clearly within the UK”.
Last year, the Bicycle Association published the insights of its research into diversity in the cycling industry, releasing a report which said the senior leaders are “overwhelmingly white, heterosexual men”, as well as noting “widespread experience of unfair treatment, including harassment”.
That followed the Association, several months earlier urging the bike industry to change if it wants to grow and reach new customers.
The report found that women hold just eight per cent of cycle workshop roles, 19 per cent of customer-facing roles, and 40 per cent of the industry’s administrative roles – though only a small handful of those have progressed to senior leadership positions.
Over 90 per cent of women face barriers to both entering and progressing within the sports industry, citing issues as discrimination, harassment, a lack of role models, difficulty finding a work-life balance, and a lack of training and targeted recruitment among the key “blockers” to progress.
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.
55 thoughts on ““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”
They searched for “family”
They searched for “family” cycling. Is the cause of their upset that they then found representations of kids having both parents in their lives, out together cycling, as a family? And, moreover, enjoying the health benefits. What were they hoping to find?
The referenced example was
The referenced example was poorly chosen, but that doesn’t change the point. Just perform a google images search for “cyclist”. The enormous majority of results are skinny white males, with a few skinny white females thrown in. I scrolled many pages through those results, and other than a couple instances of Biniam Girmay and, oddly, a bunch of Daniela Larreal Chirinos, just about every person was skinny and white — and those two professional bikeracers are skinny as well.
I’ve just done a Google of
I’ve just done a Google of “family cycling” images – results below. Of the top eight images four are all white, one is in silhouette, two are non white and one is a mix of races. So I’m not sure their racial claim holds water. If anything, the representation seems contrived already compared to the reality I see.
I tried the same on
I tried the same on DuckDuckGo which uses Bing as its engine, I believe. The top eight images were all white.
But the article is about
But the article is about “Google Images”
Sriracha wrote:
Yeah, I was just curious as to how different it might be
hawkinspeter wrote:
Yeah, I was just curious as to how different it might be— Sriracha
Which begs the question – who decides the ratios? The article holds “the authorities and other organisations” accountable. And, I notice DuckDuckGo does surface a few heavier builds.
You are missing the point.
You are missing the point. The inclusion of the word “family” is completely pointless and unnecessary.
And they’re all wearing
And they’re all wearing helmets, reinforcing the perception of cycling as dangerous.
eburtthebike wrote:
Precisely — and this is a far bigger problem than their skin-color or body-type. Which is why wearing a bicycle helmet — that provides no useful measure of safety to the rider, and please be cautious before challenging that point, because the statistics are clear — is deleterious to cyclist safety because it depresses cycling uptake, and the only thing since the Penny-farthing that has ever improved cyclist safety is “more cyclists”. No one should be wearing a bicycle helmet unless racing or hucking off mountains.
If you are too frightened to ride without a helmet, you ought to be wearing a full-face motorcycle-rated helmet — since those actually provide a (small) measure of safety to the wearer. Bicycle helmets, the dainty ~250g plastic hats that exhibit precisely the statistical signature of a placebo, are counterproductive. Which ought to surprise no one, after a few moments’ thought. Motorcycle helmets are constructed to a far higher standard than bicycle helmets, with an order of magnitude more mass, and even still, only exhibit a very small benefit to the wearer, despite those crashes happening mostly at bicycle-attainable speeds ( and in most cases, it is the speed of the other vehicle that matters, since that’s where the impact-energy originates, and that doesn’t change between bicycles and motorcycles ). Other helmets constructed vastly better than bicycle helmets — like American football and hockey helmets — also struggle to exhibit any positive benefit to the wearer, despite enormously-smaller impact energies.
Wearing a useless bicycle helmet when riding to work, or school, or on-tour, or wherever else broadcasts the unmistakable message to observers that cycling is dangerous, and typically that it is sufficiently dangerous as to be suited only to daring young men and crazy old men. Almost nothing could be further from the truth, since cycling is not very dangerous statistically, but the drumbeat of this message results in most people believing that it is. And that reduces the number of cyclists, which prevents cycling from being even safer than it already is.
dh700 wrote:
It also lays the ground for the converse, that cyclists [i]not[/i] wearing a helmet are recklessly contributing to their own endangerment. Whenever a photo-op picture of some minor Royal or celeb appears, if they are helmetless then that becomes the sole focus of comment and they are castigated as irresponsible role models, and any pro-cycling messaging they may have been promoting is down the drain.
Wendover was iirc one of the
Wendover was iirc one of the places that undermined HS2 by demanding that all the money be spent on tunnels, wasn’t it?
Place needs to be demolished and left as a wasteland monument to the importance of ignoring Nimbys
.
Speaking from a region that had furute growth plans planned around HS2, which vanished when the cowards in Government ran away from finishing the project.
dh700 wrote:
Indeed, if you Google “cyclist” (not what the article did) then you get overwhelmingly [i]sports[/i] cyclists. No surprise that they have the physique typical of their sport. If they had complained that cycling is overwhelmingly portrayed as a sport (and hence the “lycra clad” stereotype) rather than a leisure or utility endeavour then I might agree.
Perhaps you are confusing
Perhaps you are confusing “sports cyclists” with cyclists who wear tight clothing — the two are not the same at all. Just because someone wears a tight shirt, or pants, or even a jersey from a charity tour, that doesn’t make them a “sports cyclist”. The latter are people who race, or otherwise compete, on their bike, and google does return many of them, but it also includes a lot of people who appear to be riding recreationally in tight clothes.
But the point is, almost all of those images are of skinny white people, and just about the only examples of non-skinny people are on articles like this very one, observing that such pictures are incredibly rare.
Sriracha wrote:
I’m quite confident they already [made sure they] found precisely what they were hoping to find.
I haven’t read the research
I haven’t read the research in detail (obvs) but “family cycling” is a pretty blunt search. It’s not surprising that it returns e.g. lots of images of rural cycling away from traffic – because most of the images appear on leisure and tourism sites. If you were Visit Hampshire, would you use an image of the urban commute through Southampton, or a leisure ride in the New Forest? (There may be a geographical flaw in this argument, but you get the point)
EDIT: I have now read it, it’s here. I accept the general premise that cycling images are relatively undiverse; that people who don’t see themselves in images of cycling may be in some way dissuaded; and therefore that it is desirable actively to increase diversity in images of cycling. But a search for “family cycling” does not, I would suggest, provide a representative sample of cycling images people might be exposed to. If, for example, you were trying to find about about local cycle routes, you’re unlikely to come across and be dissuaded by these images because you wouldn’t search for “family cycling” because it’s untargeted.
Funnily enough, almost all
Funnily enough, almost [i]all[/i] car ads on TV show the car cruising down an empty boulevard or some unspoilt rural idyll, well away from any traffic! Somehow it does not seem to put off people who buy them for use in nose-to-tail traffic.
Isn’t this more a question of
Isn’t this more a question of Google or any other search engines algorithm not selecting images that reflect.the diversity of people cycling rather than there being a massively heavy preponderance of skinny white heterosexual families that cycle.
82% of the people living in
82% of the people living in the UK are white, so most of the people who cycle will be white.
The UK is not the world. And
The UK is not the world. And google is not sufficiently clever to vary results based on your country — I just tested this by connecting to a variety of countries with my VPN. So adjust your 82% figure for the worldwide percentage of white people, and the situation changes.
dh700 wrote:
Google says otherwise:
[I]When you search on Google, your results are customized to your current region. You can choose to see results for other countries from your computer and the Google app for Android.[/i]
TBH, I’d be astonished if it were not so. Maybe you forgot to change your browser/OS region settings?
Sriracha wrote:
Google is not Google Images.
As I said, I just tested this to confirm my point.
The question is does that
The question is does that apply to those who cycle? Most commuter/going to the shops cyclists live in cities and cities, especially London, is a lot less white than the shires.
Nevertheless, searching for ‘family cycling’ will inevitably find images associated with searches or websites aimed at family days out, and I think the websites of places that advertise themselves as a family day out will be weighted towards days out in the countryside, and specific country bike rides, rather than families travelling by bike to a day out at a London museum.
Not quite sure what the news
Not quite sure what the news is here?
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…
Indeed, if they are looking
Indeed, if they are looking to combat barriers to cycling I think there are far bigger ones than the images thrown up by Google. But I suspect they are grinding a different axe.
chrisonabike wrote:
I think there are two aspects to it. The obvious is the well established, and generally valid idea that a lot of people will rule out doing something if they think it’s not for people like them. I’d say some similarities/differences are more important than others. The personal experiences of members here isn’t that helpful as we are a self-selecting group.
If someone believes (possibly influenced by online images) that solo cyclists are mainly men who want to go fast, and mainly those who are already fit and reasonably slim that will create a barrier for women who haven’t done sport in years. etc.
The other aspect is the indirect influence images have on decision-makers when it comes to providing facilities for cycling. I’ve not yet seen criticism of a new cycle path because it’s not going to help gay people, but there is a common assertion that cycling is a white middle-class hobby, and ‘what about disabled people’ is particularly popular from those who would happily park in front of a dropped kerb, if not blocking the pavement.
Having images out there that include people using adapted bikes is particularly important. It will be harder to persuade the owners of websites designed to sell stuff to inclue more photos of scruffy people on old bikes, but local cycling campaign/support groups could and should make an effort to include more realistic images on their website and Facebook pages, and to support stories in the local press.
I’d argue that seeing other people cycling in day to day life is more important, but that’s harder in areas where cycling rates are low, so images in the media, including online, become more relevant.
FionaJJ wrote:
Totally agree with this, and it’s a point the research makes. But there seems to be quite a large disjunct between that and the research based on pictures of “family cycling”, which (as I think you have said elsewhere) are likely to skew away from local authority / community group sites.
(As Sriracha noted this
(As Sriracha noted this particular complaint is probably less about cycling.)
Not disagreeing on most of this – as we keep getting reminded humans are (mostly) very visual thinkers.
And social norms for groups are a real thing.
BUT as has been shown time and again while it’s possible for almost everyone everywhere just to get a suitable machine and cycle (the great thing about cycling) … that alone never leads to more than one or two percent of trips cycled. (Not counting cycling round the park here, or e.g. Zwifting…).
I think that’s the first thing to fix. *
I do agree that there are some particular applications for “show the cyclists” to remind people / prime their imagination e.g. on our streets / in new development projects. (The Cycling Embassy of Great Britain did an interesting one of these). However I’d note that there are often now cyclists included in visualisations of “new places” which in reality are rarely or never seen when these are delivered… because simply pasting people into images does not make them appear (or make people put the conditions in place for that to happen).
With the social / psychological drivers – I think reality does win out to some extent. I think it may be actively demotivating if all the pictures I’m shown are at complete variance to my experience. Same if I suggest a bike ride to my peers and they all react with horror / skepticism / derision. I could be wrong – a look across other diversity issues would be useful – but note that for cycling it is not just a “representation” and culture barrier. It’s also unpleasant and inconvenient to cycle many trips in the UK.
The stats from The Netherlands sort of show both sides. People who aren’t “from” there cycle (far more than e.g. in the UK). But they do cycle less than people with Dutch heritage. (There are some charities with initiatives aimed at addressing these issues). To what degree is that “representation” or people’s own culture / what they were used to elsewhere / if children the expectations their parents set? Ultimately if there aren’t many people like you, you aren’t going to see many people like you doing any activity, never mind cycling.
In the UK there are some specific laws (and guidance) we need to get amended (around “invalid carriages” / disability vehicles) but in NL at least the disabilities aspect is covered I believe (in design guidance, provision of transport options and ensuring everyone knows that the cycle path is for them too). (Some more images of all kinds of people using cycle infra.)
* Some things are simply necessary for most people to consider cycling. One is suitable spaces / routes to do so (and even to cycle round the park you’ve got to get to the park). Another is motor traffic speed and volume reduction. Connected – making cycling some trips attractive relative to driving.
Oh, the grifters have arrived
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.
eltonioni wrote:
Correct it’s simply a bike for work or pleasure STOP TRYING TO DIVIDE US.
1980s Grifters were pretty
1980s Grifters were pretty good bikes, though.
This is another piece of
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
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!)
anke2 wrote:
I tried a search of “commuter cyclists” on DuckDuckGo and that was worse than “family cycling” for diversity. The same search on Google scores much better on diversity.
I don’t think that the image searches take into account your search history as otherwise I’d be getting a lot more squirrel images.
Up until now I’ve been
quiff wrote:
No, that feels a little bit like cheating. There’s lots of AI squirrels already appearing in searches though
hawkinspeter wrote:
I’m pretty sure your cycling squirrels are ‘AI’ produced. They certainly seem to have some unusual physical differences. Unless that was an intentional choice to reflect diversity.
It’s just prejudice. If
It’s just prejudice. If people weren’t ignoring the needs of squirrels for wheeled transport and there were more in the media about it I’m sure this would occur more frequently.
mdavidford wrote:
I’m sure they are, but I didn’t produce it, just found it on an image search. There’s not that many great images of more than one squirrel cycling, so I went with that one.
You need a drink.
You need a drink.
Try a Pink Squirrel cocktail.
————
To be used in commiseration when squirrels have nested in your loft, or in celebration when you see a red squirrel or you (or your cat) catch a grey one and turn it pink. In the latter case it is an excellent funeral toast.
1 oz creme de noyaux (or Amaretto)
1 tbsp white creme de cacao
1 tbsp light cream (or ice cream)
Shake all ingredients with ice, strain into a cocktail glass, and serve.
There is another worrying
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!)
There’s another issue with
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.
Internet images aren’t free.
Internet images aren’t free. The owners have copyright in them unless they choose to make them available via, for example, Creative Commons licences.
Whether AI uses copyright images anyway, I don’t know.
HarrogateSpa wrote:
Well, that’s a whole bag of squirrels you’re opening right there.
Copyright covers the right to make copies and distribution thereof, but by viewing a webpage, those images are being copied and distributed by the computers involved. However, that’s where it gets complicated, as it could be argued that simply viewing the image could be counted under “fair use” and also that as the owner has made the image freely available to anyone on the internet, that it could count as entrapment if they then seek to prosecute anyone who does view that image.
When you throw AI into the mix, it gets even murkier as AI is very commonly trained on images that would be subject to copyright, and arguably, the results of AI images will contain aspects of all the copyrighted images used to train the AI. There’s also the question of whether an AI image can be copyrighted i.e. does the person creating the image prompt then “own” the image or does it more properly belong to the original artists that created the images in the training sets?
(Personally, I think copyright has been appropriated by large corporations to enhance their power and profits and the length of time that works are now under copyright is just obscene. With our current long copyright terms and lack of archiving, we are going to lose so many works of art that won’t be able to be released into the public domain when copyright lapses – that’s a clear breach of the implied contract between the creator and the public interest. We now rely on piracy to provide copies of things such as early episodes of Doctor Who).
Also, there’s an important distinction between “free” as in speech and “free” as in beer. Internet images are “free” as in beer.
O
O
How can a picture tell us
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.
Although in my area the
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.
I think this is kind of BS
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.
cyclisto wrote:
I agree, but public perception does have a role to play too. We’ve had decades of poor portrayal of cyclists (used to be the butt of jokes in sitcoms) and that only seems to have stepped up more recently with outright attacks on cyclists, both physically and with hate-filled articles pushed by certain media outlets.
It seems like arguing over
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.]
No mention of the industry’s
No mention of the industry’s marketing being focussed too heavily to the sports (esp. road racing) sector than utility sector skewing the figures.
Maybe they should spend less
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.
Reading this story, it’s
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.
I suppose there may be some
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?
I think it’s been a problem
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.