Looking behind you as you ride your bike is something you are taught to do in cycling proficiency tests, but it can be taken to extremes. During the Beijing Olympic games, I watched open-mouthed as Victoria Pendleton lapped the banked velodrome at a decent speed in training while doing a fair impersonation of a wise old owl, head fixed on one side, eyes pointing behind. Lap after lap she went, never looking forward. It is, apparently, something all the Great Britain sprinters practise.

For Pendleton and her ilk, this is a key skill, enabling her to keep watch on her opponent while moving forwards; but on the road, for the everyday cyclist, there’s a far more important reason to practise, if not perhaps with the obsessive attention to detail she showed. Recently, I’ve become convinced that if I turn my head and look at a car as it approaches from behind, it’s almost certain that the driver won’t cut me up.

Taking a quick glance as cars approached from behind used to be simply because I wanted to know what was coming, how fast it was going, and whether it was going to move out. Now I do it deliberately with the aim of making the cars overtake wide.

I’m not quite sure why that particular action elicits that particular response. It’s not a matter of eye contact: there is no time for that. I suspect it’s because in moving my head and looking behind, I’m reminding the driver that in front of him or her is a human being, not merely a bike with an appendage. Perhaps, additionally, there is a little wobble of the bike as I move my head, making the point that I just may move out into the car’s path and I need space.

Opinions vary among cyclists about the degree to which one should practise defensive cycling such as this. The arguments against are that telling motorists how to drive may be seen as provocative, and, more compellingly, that hand signals might cause an accident. But in rural Herefordshire, most drivers seem to appreciate being warned with a polite but definite hand signal if it is not a good time to overtake (blind bend, crest of a hill hiding a vehicle that I can see but they can’t), and then motioned forwards when the road is clear.

Cycling in London, I used to take this to its logical extreme when parked cars and traffic coming the other way narrowed the road to the point where anything overtaking was going to come within 5cm of my elbow or cause oncoming vehicles to swerve: I’d just move out until the road widened. Looking at the Highway Code, cyclists are actually encouraged to “leave plenty of room when passing parked vehicles”.

The arguments for defensive cycling are that it’s a matter of self-preservation, but also that it makes the roads safer for others as well: after all, if I cannot see round the blind bend in front of me, that applies to the motorist who is contemplating crossing the double white line, and I’d say it’s better to be pro-active rather than hugging the gutter and hoping it all turns out for the best.

Defensive cycling is about being selective and behaving sensibly and courteously – and remembering that the driver I feel is about to whiz past my elbow may well feel he or she is being selective and sensible as well.

Hence the virtue of the long glance behind: it’s only a look, not an instruction.

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