“… the only good cyclist is a dead one …” – editor of the richmond magazine – september issue

I doubt very much that a
I doubt very much that a member of my family is in any more danger on a bike than they were before this editorial was written (my wife certainly isn’t judging by the thick layer of dust on her bike).

The guy (who I think is an idiot for writing this, by the way) is obviously making the 2 exagerated remarks in an unsuccessful attempt to put a ‘grumpy old man’ comedy spin on his enjoyment of the Olympics.

I cycle a lot, and I drive a lot.

When I’m driving some cyclists infuriate me too – in fact it happened today when a cyclist passed me on the near-side, between kerb & car, at a very busy junction as I was moving off and veering slightly left to avoid the attentions of a large truck in the lane next to me. I thought I was going to clip him – luckily I saw him just in time. As he looked at me I mentioned that his male appendage was located on the fore of his head! Now, that guy needs to learn how to cycle properly if he wants to stay alive.

Having said that, when I cycle, I know that I take the odd risk – afterall it’s difficult to ride fast if you’ve gotta keep stopping 👿 , so I’m sure I’ve annoyed drivers too.

I find that taking an aggresive position on the road, riding fast, staying aware and anticipating is the safest way to ride. It keeps me alive (or at least it has done so far – nearly 40 now). However, I’m sure this style of riding annoys the hell out of people like the guy who wrote this article. I doubt he’d ever try to kill me though. You usually find that people like him are all mouth (or pen) and no balls.

Not exactly the worst
Not exactly the worst anti-cycling artice I’ve ever read. His 2 negative comments seem to be a rather exaggerated (for comedy effect) position of his real feelings towards cyclists, which I suspect are slight anoyance mixed with mild envy. Nothing to get worked up about.

On-line lynch mob? How about
On-line lynch mob? How about a real lynch mob. Much more fun.

Milky88 wrote:
This road.cc

Milky88 wrote:

This road.cc article could equally well have harped on about how Team GB’s cyclists are turning even the most ardent cycle-haters into bike lovers… well, maybe that’s stretching it too far.

Can I just point out (as you’ve said it twice) that this isn’t a road.cc article, it’s a post on the discussion forum which has been posted by a user. Nothing to do with the road.cc editorial team (who incidentally do bring us a wide variety of stories from the cycling world)

You’ve probably just
You’ve probably just quadrupled the number of people who bothered to read the editorial. Well done

Whilst it’s a fair point that
Whilst it’s a fair point that there are more consequential things to complain about, I think things like this contribute to the foundation that underpins those consequential things. The consequential things are the symptoms, not the disease.

It’s the fact that we, as a society, are tolerant of shabby standards of driving that means cyclists get hit and killed by people who had no intention of killing anyone. A harsh sentence for an unintentional death, however stupidly it was caused, is a stable door shut on a bolted horse. Make the sentence as harsh as you like, the fact remains that in nearly all cases the driver was just stupid or lazy, not malevolent.

And it’s the fact that we, as a society, are tolerant of bigoted and aggressive attitudes to other road users that means people take dangerous action on the road and call for “the others” to be removed from it, or for other legislation which offers no benefit at all for anyone other than to make one group feel that they’ve got one over on the other. Ignoring editorials such as this says that it’s an acceptable view, that it’s ok to hold that view.

Verbal discrimination and demeaning language have been made unacceptable not because it’s an actual physical oppression but because it undermines equality in terms of people’s attitudes. If the article had essentially said that “a temperate view is that the only good gay man is a dead one, so I find it very strange that I enjoyed George Michael’s bit at the closing ceremony, but then I saw a chap coming out of a gay nightclub and vomiting the pavement so I shouted abuse at him and was so relieved to be able to feel able to hate gay people again” then would we still be saying, “yeah, that’s fine, it’s just a bit of comic exaggeration”? Of course not: you don’t publish stuff that says it’s ok to hate gay people, because it’s not and as a society we don’t put up with that any more.

The point is that it remains socially acceptable to hate cyclists, and that attitude leaches through to things which affect us on a frequent basis. Campaigning for harsher sentences for killing people is all very well but I don’t believe for one second it will actually make any difference to the accident rate or the fatality rate.

Campaigning for just a bit of basic understanding of one another is something that might just stop people cutting cyclists up, might just stop people bellowing red-faced expletives at cyclists for no reason whatsoever, might just stop people trying to get counterproductive legislation in place, and might just encourarage a few more people to take up cycling without fear of people like Mr Nye fantasising about mowing them down on their way to work.

I don’t think a lynch mob is productive, but I do think it’s incredibly important to provide a loud and collective voice that makes it clear that it’s not acceptable to publish views like Mr Nye’s, let alone be in charge of an entire publication whilst doing so.

Let’s wait and see if the
Let’s wait and see if the offending article mysteriously gets deleted from the online edition of the magazine…..