TfL has agreed to ask fleet operators to remove the unpopular stickers in exchange for a more appropriate message

The van driver I spoke to in Amsterdam last month would no doubt laugh at the “cyclists stay back” stickers that have been seen on vehicles in London and beyond. For him, checking the inside of the vehicle for cyclists, long before turning, is just part of driving safely.

Now, Transport for London (TfL), which issued the stickers, seems to see the problem too, and has agreed to ask fleet operators to remove them. TfL will replace the “stay back” stickers on buses with a more appropriate message – according to the CTC we’ll see these by the end of the summer. The new stickers will sound more like a warning than a command, however.

The move follows months of criticism of the stickers from a coalition of campaigners and cyclists and it may not seem like a big deal but, as Peter Walker eloquently put it recently, the wording is important.

The much maligned yellow rectangle was originally designed, no doubt with good intentions, to warn people not to ride their bikes down the inside of a large vehicle whose blind spot could hide an entire car. Left-turning lorries pose one of the greatest risks to cyclists on the roads. However, as the stickers spread from the near sides of buses to the near and off sides of vans and minibuses around the country – vehicles with perfectly adequate vision of the road – they ended up looking like an ultimatum for cyclists to not cycle anywhere, or to do so at their own risk.

Attitudes on the roads, which govern how safe journeys by bicycle feel, are important, and if we’re to get more people getting about by this cheap, healthy and fun means we need everyone to understand that the roads are public spaces for everyone, no matter how they get around. Staying stationary is not much of an option, however you choose to travel.

TfL will be working on new wording for stickers on lorries, and rightly so. Until the lorries we share our streets with have direct vision of the road around them, the problem isn’t going away.

The challenge now will be to get companies around the country to get rid of the stickers – reported to have spread to small company vans as far away as Edinburgh and Manchester. Those vehicles with direct vision of the road, and no excuses, may consider the rather more positive “cyclists stay awesome”, as proposed by Road.cc.

In the meantime, goodbye to “stay back”, and good riddance.