Iain Duncan Smith's anti-cycling crusade is anti-reality

Iain Duncan Smith, a man who has had to deny responsibility for the deaths of thousands and suffering of millions of benefits claimants whilst he was in charge of the benefits system, has found himself a new target: cyclists. 

This started in the final days of the previous government when Iain was desperately searching for some kind of culture war issue, and he seems to be at it again, penning an article in the Telegraph that is once again attempting to spread hatred about cyclists. 

> Cyclists "horrified" by Iain Duncan Smith's Telegraph column

The article has what might be considered a reasonable headline at first glance: 'Dangerous cyclists should be driven off our roads'.

However, the true purpose is clear from the first sentence: "In Denbighshire a few days ago a two-year-old child was knocked down on the pavement by a cyclist on an e-bike."

The reality is that a two-year-old was hit by a 65-year-old woman, in a park, not a pavement. The mother of the child has even been quoted saying: "I understand it was an accident, and it wasn’t the cyclist’s intention - it was just a case of ‘wrong place, wrong time’’. 

The police have even said that no crime was committed. After all, it is not illegal to ride a bike in a park, and I don’t think any sane person would claim it is. 

Iain won’t let some good old reality get in the way of a culture war though, ploughing on with ill-informed opinions:

“Only a few months ago I had amended the Conservative government’s Criminal Justice Bill to bring cyclists on the road network under the law.”

Let’s break this down. Iain thinks that an accident in a park would be solved by a law to ‘bring cyclists on the road network under the law’...

This is indicative of the wider challenges that cycling has in that the voices against it are often louder (and more ignorant) than the voices for it. Iain joins broadcasters Mike Graham and Julia Hartley-Brewer in firstly identifying cyclists as a problem, then offering nonsensical solutions to that problem. 

Throughout this article, there is a litany of facts that are wrong, unsourced, or manipulated to suit his narrative, so anybody reading this would consider it to be reasonable because it doesn’t overtly call for the chemical castration of every cyclist in the UK. 

He claims: “The problem is getting worse.

"The number of pedestrians hit by cyclists has increased by a third since 2020. In 2022, the most recent year for which figures are available, there were 462 collisions and those were only the ones that were reported to the police.”

Four years seems like an odd timeframe to compare data, right? I wonder what would have happened to the data in 2020 that would have seen the number of accidents be so much lower? Only something like everybody staying indoors for most of the year could cause anomalous data like that... 

There is even this bizarre paragraph: “Sadly, there are some who persist in claiming absurdly that if such restrictions were put in place, cyclists would stop riding bikes, which apparently trumps road safety. Riding safely within the law isn’t a threat to cycling, it is only a threat to those determined to ride unsafely.”

If this is such an absurd thing to claim, then why has Iain been unable to explain why it is absurd? Instead, he makes the same argument that any faux-intellectual makes about a bad piece of legislation: ‘It’s only bad for people who break the law'. 

That kind of sums up this article really, it is a poorly researched, awfully written, and totally misleading piece of anti-cyclist propaganda. It is a faux-intellectual moral crusade by a man who tries to claim the moral high ground, despite many legitimately questioning whether his track record suggests he has any morals at all.