Jeremy Vine has suggested that the aggressive nature of some of the drivers in London can be attributed to personal and behind closed doors reasons… namely “not getting enough sex” and having “small di*k energy”.

Appearing on TV and radio host Gaby Roslin’s podcast, the BBC Radio 2 and Channel 5 presenter and popular camera cyclist responded to the host’s attempt to empathise with drivers who lash out on the road.

Roslin began: “The people who get angry, somebody’s pulled out in front of them and they yell ‘Get out the way’ and they hoot and all that. Whether it’s bicycles — my husband’s a cyclist as well — whether it’s a car, I always say, but you don’t know what happened in their life?”

“Do you? Oh gosh,” Vine replied, before Roslin added: “Because they might be rushing because their mother’s not well. Something might have happened to their child at school.”

“That’s how lovely you are because I’m different,” Vine said. “I just say that’s what they call small d*** energy. That he’s not getting enough.”

He continued: “What happens is, all the people who are not getting enough sex lock themselves in small metal boxes and drive around London. That’s fundamentally what’s going on in our society. It’s so lovely of you to take such a positive view of it.”

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The comments are the latest in Vine’s long-running, high-profile campaign to improve conditions for cyclists, often by highlighting the behaviour of drivers who treat the Highway Code as more of a vague suggestion than a binding document.

Vine’s reputation as a cycling advocate has been built on daily footage captured from his 360-degree helmet camera, showing everything from close passes to drivers on phones. On one recent occasion, Vine submitted four clips to police in one day, two for close passing and two for mobile phone use, noting that “they’ll all be fined” and that he only reports “about one in every 200” incidents he sees on the road.

While Vine’s remarks are clearly provocative, the comments appeared to have been made in a tongue-in-cheek manner. When Roslin continued to suggest that “there might be something going on with them” and that “you have to be generous with them”, Vine seemed to take a step back and agreed with the host.

However, it perhaps also shouldn’t come as a surprise — the 59-year-old having previously described drivers with terms such as “petrosexuals”.

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Jeremy Vine with a penny farthing
Jeremy Vine with a penny farthing (Image Credit: Jeremy Vine)

Only last month, Vine clashed — this time on Twitter/X — with his motoring Jezzer counterpart, Jeremy Clarkson, who had dismissed proposals for new protected cycle infrastructure at one of London’s most dangerous roundabouts by saying: “I use it frequently too. And it’s fine because I have a car, not a child’s toy.” Vine, who supports the planned changes, simply replied: “Oh God.”

It’s not the first time the pair of Jezzer-era broadcasters have taken opposite views on road safety. While Clarkson’s barbs continue to get traction among his motoring fanbase, Vine remains focused on improving infrastructure and challenging what he sees as deeply ingrained hostility towards cyclists.

As Vine explained on the road.cc Podcast this year, his advocacy was born not from early enthusiasm for cycling, but from frustration. “I was in the classic thing of thinking they just got in the way,” he said of his earlier, “car-brained” mindset. But after starting to commute by bike in his 40s, he underwent what he described as a full conversion.

> “I’m impartial on everything – except my own safety”: Jeremy Vine on his cycling “radicalisation”, Twitter trolls, the “gaslighting of cyclists”, and why bad streets and bad drivers cause road danger

“I got miserable. I got sad and fat,” he said. “And then basically, I thought I should just embed some exercise in my daily life – and the only place I could find the space was the commute, so I thought I’m going to try and do it on a bicycle.”

His transformation from casual cyclist to public safety campaigner was rapid. “It wasn’t a gradual thing. It was like a conversion. Suddenly, I started looking like Taylor Swift. I felt better,” he joked. “And the thing that then radicalised me was that I began to realise there was no reason on earth why it should be unsafe, and I really resented the unpredictability of it.”

He even disclosed his stance on impartiality when it comes to cycling safety, saying: “We’re not impartial on litter. We’re not impartial on cruelty to animals. People have misunderstood this impartiality thing. You know, I can’t think of where impartiality comes in. In this area, it was preposterous for someone to complain that I was too positive about the cycle lane in Chiswick, when for the last 40 years we’ve had four lanes of cars and no cycling at all.”

He added: “I am not impartial on my own personal safety. I’m not impartial on the death of Esme Weir, the little girl on a scooter who’s going down the pavement and a fucking truck parks on the pavement and kills her, and there’s not even a conviction. I’m not impartial on that.

“And if I sound like I’ve been triggered, yes, I am sorry, but it’s incredible the gaslighting of cyclists, to make us feel like we’re saying something revolutionary, if we simply say we want to be safe when we travel to work. We don’t want to die.

“And the reason people buy these massive wankpanzers or Kensington tractors is because they’ve been told they’re safer. But we’re not allowed to say, well, we’d like to be safer too.”