It has been a vivid, ironic, sometimes brutal, sometimes tragic, week for cyclists. I don’t mean the Olympians, I mean regular cyclists. Last week Critical Mass did their monthly cycle through central London – they’ve been doing it on the last Friday of the month for the past 18 years. There was really no need for the police to have a cow, but a cow was had, resulting in kettling, CS gas and 182 arrests. (Three people have since been charged with public order offences.) Y ou can sign this petition if you like.
On Monday Kyle Coen was killed near Sittingbourne, Kent, on the way to his girlfriend’s house. He was 14 years old and became the 60th cyclist to be killed in Britain this year.
I know all this because I’m part of a cycling community, and I’m part of a cycling community because I have a bike. It’s that simple. Someone said recently that “cyclists” were to people who cycle as the Taxpayers’ Alliance was to people who pay tax. I chortled, but I don’t agree – this suggests a hardcore of activist cyclists, holding specific, trenchant views that your run-of-the-mill person on a bike wouldn’t agree with.
In fact, however hardcore a cyclist looks, in dress or facemask or demeanour, they tend to want nothing more radical than safe roads. That means speed limits, lorries with sensors, major deliveries commingled and scheduled at night – the simple things that would already obtain if road policy were developed to reflect the mixed-vehicle economy we’d like to see, rather than the motor hegemony we senselessly accept. But anyway, all this is well known.
Less well known is that, mile for mile, it’s more dangerous to be a pedestrian than it is to be a cyclist, and every journey by public transport generates two journeys by foot (most journeys by car will generate at least one journey by foot – it’s rare to be able to drive directly from one door to another). Pedestrians never object en masse; they don’t self-identify as “pedestrians” and they never say how outrageous it is how many of them die. And yet in 2011, in Greater London, 77 pedestrians were killed (to 16 cyclists); 903 were seriously injured (to 555 cyclists); their deaths were up 33% on the year before, the serious injuries up 6%.
The best time for pedestrians to become a meaningful lobby was the mayoral election, and it didn’t help that Transport for London did not release this data until afterwards. A freedom of information request from Ted Reilly, a road safety campaigner, shows that these figures were available from 27 April this year. John Biggs, a member of the Greater London Authority, asked for them on 1 May, 8 May, and 23 May – either from TfL or from Boris Johnson – and each time was told they hadn’t been collated. On 28 June this appalling record was finally made public. This is indefensible, but I could send myself nuts pointing out the indefensibility of the way roads are run in this city, as if air quality is a killjoy’s complaint, and nothing must disturb the delicate appetites of commerce.
What interests me more is this distinction between the political punch of the cyclist and the more supine profile of the pedestrian: cyclists are no more sinned against than pedestrians, and yet have a greater sense of outrage and more solidarity. We organise and agitate; we get questions asked in the London assembly, even if the result is that all the Conservatives walk out. We see ourselves not as less than the driver, but as distinct. We see our position on the road not as a baseline, but as an added value, to be protected. I walk, I cycle and I drive, but I attach a political identity to only one of those things.
Partly, I think, this is because cycling is a chosen activity. People don’t make walking a matter of pride, because they didn’t choose it. But pride should attach to effort, so the least pride of all should be taken when you’re in a car, medium pride on a bike (the wheel was invented for a reason, to save human energy), maximum pride on foot.
Naturally, there are fewer cyclists than there are either drivers or pedestrians, and this fosters solidarity. But that’s irrational – the purpose of your unity is that you have a worthwhile cause. You can’t only do it when you think of yourself as the numerical underdog. The case of pedestrians shows that you can be many in number, and still be disregarded.
Finally, cyclists are self-righteous. Just admit it. (You lot who were kettled by the police on Friday night – you are allowed to be self-righteous.) The small amount of skill and outlay involved in becoming a cyclist is enough to generate a sense of superiority. This is the least attractive thing about us, and I’m including how we look in Lycra. But if a sense of the big I Am is what it takes to campaign for your rights on the road, then pedestrians need to dig out their own entitlement rather than stall on how annoying everybody else is.
Transport policy has to start with the safety of people on two feet. We have to be able to walk before we can ride.
Twitter: @zoesqwilliams
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Walking the Brexit tightrope at Labour conference – Politics Weekly
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