I want to ride my biCYCLE...

So, those Victorians. On the one hand they gave us an economy addicted to fossil fuels; lots of gloomy dark architecture and a really bad reputation as brutal, insensitive empire-builders. On the other hand they also gave us the London Underground, the suffragette movement, and bicycles. Yes, as addicted as they were to all things black and hydrocarbon, the Victorians somehow managed to invent something which only needed a human with a good sense of balance for power.

As peculiar as some early bicycles were, and as uncomfortable as some of them must have been to ride (for example, the Penny Farthing, guilty on both counts), two wheels on a frame with a bit of chain, a few cogs and a couple of pedals has turned out to be nothing short of revolutionary. In the late 19th century, the bicycle was championed by feminists and suffragettes, so much so that a demonstration against the awarding of degree titles to female students at Cambridge University in 1897 saw the effigy of a woman riding a bicycle being burned in the Market Square (ironic, considering the city of Cambridge is completely overrun with bicycles these days). In fact, the popularity of bicycles with women is partly credited for various late Victorian wardrobe revolutions. I’ve never tried riding a bike in a corset and floor length skirt but to be honest I have enough trouble keeping my loose jeans out of the gear mechanism. To this day bicycles remain the main form of transport in remote corners of Africa and South East Asia, for farmers taking their produce to market, for people commuting to work, for children going to school. Bicycles allow people to travel long distances quickly and at next to no cost, aside from buying a bicycle and keeping it maintained, which is nowhere near as costly as a yearly MOT, new tyres, oil, petrol, screen wash, and whatever else your four wheeled tin can might need to get off the driveway throughout the course of a year. All over the world, bicycles symbolize freedom.

So why the heck do motorists and other road users in this country treat cyclists who also use the road as if they’re target practise? Most people I know who drive cars don’t act this way. But every time I dare to venture onto a moderately busy road on my shiny red wheels, it’s as if I’ve unwittingly become worth 50 points in a real-life version of Grand Theft Auto or whatever the kids play these days. Even the road outside my flat is like an extreme cyclist’s assault course during rush hour, and it has cycle lanes. I have only the deepest admiration for those brave souls who risk their lives daily cycling to work in central London, and frankly anyone who attempts to cycle up Edinburgh’s Princes Street at the minute must have a death wish. Aside from the fact that the entire street is usually rammed with double decker buses shunting along shoulder to shoulder, recent work to lay down tram lines was finished in a bit of a hurry, so now the tarmac surrounding the tramlines is crumbling away. Meaning that there are now two inch ruts running up and down the length of Princes Street, which have already lead to several serious accidents involving cyclists.

Although I’ve been lucky enough to never have had an argument with the wrong end of a lorry, I owe one broken arm and one scarred elbow to off-road bicycle accidents. Yeah, I guess, as revolutionary as they are, bicycles are pretty dangerous. If you have an accident off-road, it’s usually either your own fault or a complete fluke circumstance that you couldn’t have seen coming. Most of the time, though, if you’re wearing a helmet (and please please do) you’ll get off fairly lightly, unless you’re doing something stupid like going way too fast (partly responsible for the broken arm). However, if you have an accident on a road, firstly most of the time it won’t be your fault, more likely the fault of some idiot driver who wasn’t looking properly and who needs to re-sit their driving test, and secondly, things have the potential to get sticky pretty quickly, depending on how fast other road users realise what’s happened and make evasive manoeuvres. I have lost count of the number of stories I have heard of people being unseated by a car whose driver has either selective eyesight that only sees objects that go brrrrrrrrrrrrrum or who appears to be testing the whole real-life GTA scenario to see if there are actual consequences to knocking down two-wheeled things. I have also lost count of the number of these stories in which a cyclist’s helmet near enough saved their lives, or at least came out of the whole experience with a few interesting dents in it.

If certain people are reading this right now, chances are they are screaming “HIPPOCRIT!!!” at their computer screens. Sorry guys...see I can harp on about the importance of helmets but when it comes down to it I only ever wear a helmet if I’m going on a) a long bike ride or b) a bike ride that will likely involve playing chicken with white van men and taxi drivers. One thing I love about where I live now compared to my hometown is the existence of quiet streets and actual off-road cycle paths. As in, let’s put some tarmac down on this bridleway and give half the path to pedestrians and half to cyclists. Oh and while we’re at it, let’s put up some signs so that people know it’s a cycle path and a foot path. In my hometown I don’t think they have ever heard of the concept of a cycle path. According to the Sustrans website (www.sustrans.org.uk) there is supposed to be a cycle path running through my home village into the centre of the nearby town. The only reason I know where this supposed “cycle path” is is because I spent far too many years running around the woods in my village as a kid and I know where all the footpaths and bridleways are, so I know roughly the paths that are part of this so-called cycle route. Never mind that there is the small matter of the town’s bypass to negotiate en route...oh well, good target practise for all those Eddie Stobart lorries, I guess.

The thing that gets me is that, drivers moan to death about bloody cyclists who don’t obey the rules of the road and cause a nuisance, and yet no-one seems prepared to pile some real investment into our national cycle network to ensure that cyclists have useful, well-maintained off-road routes between major centres of population. Some cyclists do not obey the rules of the road, and some cyclists really are as much of a road hazard as a dead cow in the middle of a motorway, or a white van man on his way to get a takeaway. So if you want to encourage people to cycle more often, surely you would make it safer and easier for them to do so, by giving them more accessible off-road routes between their doorstep and the nearest town centre? Or at least make it safer for cyclists to use the road network? To be honest, we’d probably still be having accidents even after all that. My latest near-miss came on an off-road cycle path, when a fellow two-wheeler played kamikaze and came bowling down a hill and crashed into my front tyre. “Oh, sorry! I didn’t see you there!” he said, after taking out his earphones. Open your eyes, then, you eejit.

xx