Are you about to make sweeping generalisations about a mass of people? Have you mistaken north London for the whole of the UK? We’re here to help

Maybe it’s just the end-of-year effect, with ideas running low and a couple more commissions to fulfil. Or perhaps it’s just the traditional news lull over the festive period, obliging newspaper columnists to dig into their own experiences and prejudices. Whatever the reason, we’ve been somewhat spoiled recently with slightly silly opinion pieces about cycling.

The two that come most immediately to mind include one from this very website, a Boxing Day offering by journalist-turned author Linda Grant. Something of a classic of the “cyclists are the number one road peril!” genre, it prompted a number of complaints to me, as if somehow I get to edit or veto every Guardian article about the subject (I don’t).

Then on Saturday another very experienced writer, the Telegraph’s Libby Purves, turned in a curious pudding of a column. It began by soberly noting the reason a number of London cyclists ride along at a fair pace – it appears to be safer amid the speeding motor traffic – before spending numerous paragraphs castigating the “Lycra louts” (yes, the phrase again) for doing just that.

Where is the most cycle-friendly city in the world? Read more

I’m not here to pull apart the particular failings of these columns. Better minds than mine have done that on social media. My mission today is more one of overly optimistic hope. Below is a list of questions I’d like the next columnist embarking on such a piece to consider before they put fingers to keyboard.

Will they do so? Almost certainly not. But, to cannibalise the slogan of helmet compulsion campaigners, if it saves us from just one more of these articles, the effort will be worthwhile.

Do you mean most or all cyclists? Really?

Many such pieces begin with an anecdote about almost being run down by a maniacal cyclist, which is swiftly extrapolated into a far more general condemnation. Mail columnist Petronella Wyatt was once accused of using the same anecdote about her mother twice, as if new, two years apart.

Grant moves seamlessly from a slightly opaque story about being skimmed at a T-junction to say, “Cyclists are behaving in ways that pedestrians cannot predict or understand.” What, all of us? Most of us? Just a few? Such sweeping generalisations are a bedrock of anti-cycling pieces. And they’re utterly baffling.



I like to ponder what other extremely disparate groups with only one, minor thing in common are so herded together these days. “Vegetarians are behaving in ways that pedestrians cannot predict or understand.” Or (to part-borrow again from Grant): “The percentage of arsehole great aunts may be a minority, but it’s a minority large enough to make going to tea parties an exercise in guesswork.”

My guess is no other hugely heterogeneous group would be so labelled. So why pick on cyclists?

Why is a bike the only transport choice that defines people?

As readers of this blog might have worked out, I like to ride bikes. But I also walk, take buses, trains, tubes, occasionally drive, fly in the odd plane, use a tram. I even – very, very occasionally – use the cable car across the Thames. So why is it just this one form of transport among many that marks me so?

During these various travels I occasionally encounter people who clearly are, in Grant’s words, arseholes. They might drive aggressively, push to get onto a packed commuter train. A man once fully reclined his plane seat despite the fact I was sat behind him with my then-infant son on my knee, responding to my squashed requests for more space by saying: “Tell me why it’s my problem?”

I have a sneaking suspicion that such people tend to be what you could call multi-modal arseholes, as likely to speed in a car as they are cycle at pace through a crowd of pedestrians. So why just highlight the cycling?

Do you really mean cyclists are the biggest danger on the roads?

Neither Grant nor Purves makes this accusation explicit, but others do. One slightly infamous Guardian piece from 2014 actually argued that other riders – not lorries, not cars – are the biggest worry about cycling in London.

The common inference is that drivers, by and large, tend to obey the law. This is silly.



Near where I live is a 20mph street which has one of those slightly retro digital signboards showing speed and a smiley or frowning face, depending which side of the limit you are. I once spent 10 minutes watching dozens of vehicles go past. Not a single smiley face. I cycle on that road almost daily. I’d guess a law-breaking rate of about 80%.



Various surveys show anything from half to three-quarters of drivers admit to speeding. Around half a million drivers supposedly use their phones at the wheel.

I’m not a fan of cyclists jumping lights. I think it’s antisocial and can be intimidating, especially for the most vulnerable pedestrians. And pedestrians do get hurt by bikes. But pretty rarely.

The same day Grant inferred cyclists were the biggest worry for pedestrians, three were killed and one critically hurt while walking in Doncaster. By a bike? No, of course, by a car. It’s not about morals, it’s simple physics.



Are cyclists really puritan eco-warriers?

According to Grant, those on two wheels are “the most morally pure of road users, the ethical standard-bearer for healthy living, a challenge to climate change”.

Well. Of course, I like the fact my bike isn’t emitting toxic fumes or greenhouse gases – as an asthmatic I take London’s smog pretty personally – but I mainly use it because it has a near-magical ability to get me to where I want to go on time, and with a smile on my face.

I suspect that’s true for many other people.

Are you mistaking north London for the rest of the UK?

Yes, London has a somewhat feral road culture, encompassing some antisocial cyclists as well as some drivers, not to mention those aforementioned rude train passengers.

But outside London and a few other cities, the idea of this vast, ongoing war between pedestrians and cyclists is about as relevant as traffic worries from horsedrawn carts. Bikes make up about 1% to 2% of all trips in the UK, a proportion which, nationally, is not even rising. If there’s only a handful of cyclists on the road every 10 square miles they’ll need to work really hard to intimidate all the pedestrians.

Have you mistaken Twitter for real life?

The common second chapter to such articles is played out on social media, where the journalists like to profess shock – shock! – that people who ride bikes with Twitter accounts are annoyed.

A quick note: I’m fully aware that as a man my social media experience is very different to female journalists, who can be the recipients of vile and very personal abuse. I’m not defending this at all.

But I would advise those who trade in sweeping generalisations about cycling to bear two things in mind. One, don’t be surprised to have your silliness countered robustly. And equally, don’t think this says anything at all about cyclists in general. We’re not all “a very sensitive lot”. It’s just Twitter.