Today, I am tired and angry and I think that I have made mistakes. I think I have made mistakes, because I am changing, and if I am changing, I am learning, and if I am learning, maybe it is through making mistakes? I cannot be sure of them all.
I definitely made a mistake two weeks ago. Someone had triple-parked in a bike-gated cul-de-sac, so I had to edge the bike between two cars on the off-pavement side, standing on the pedals at walking speed. As I got to the back corner of the opaque 4x4, a woman stepped out, and, unable to stop, I lowered my head and caught her in the nose with my helmet.
The gap too thin to walk with the bike, the car too tall to see over, I had to admit it was my fault. People are always going to triple-park. Pedestrians are always going to walk out blind. So it was my fault.
I should have called out.
Then there was the news of Wiggins and Shane Sutton colliding with obliviousness. All Hell broke loose. I played my part in a radio interview, and said nothing of what needed to be said. I read the fora, listened to the opinions. My worst fears were realised, as I discovered just how many people have no idea what it is to ride our roads. The rights we have, and we have fought for. The fear we fight.
There is so much ground to cover, so much to iterate and re-iterate to explain to, it seems, so many people, about why they must resist de-humanising cyclists. Why they shouldn't focus on the differences, but the similarities.
But I must try.
Road cycling is a beautiful sport. I assert this, because to me, it is, and to a large number of people internationally, it is. I should not need to rationalise it, because so long as a benign hobby brings so much joy to so many people, that should be all that is required to support it. But I shall try to explain.
Cycling is still a sport of the people. It races among the people, on the streets, the roads, that we know. To ride the same roads is to taste a fraction of the same glory as our heroes. It is true that the equipment at the high end has grown ever more unattainable, but there are certainly more bicycles than people in the UK. You do not require a livery stable, a gym membership, or a team. All you require is a bike - the same bike that can take you to work, that you visit friends on, that can be an integral part of your life every single day. That can take you on holiday, to places you've never seen, or back to family long missed.
The sport itself is as thrilling to participate in as any you're likely to come across. It rewards fitness and stamina, but also cunning, teamwork and intuition. For every racer, there is a race.
Ignoring the history, the sport is a natural evolution of people moving every day under their own power - an ambition that no civilised society should wish to stymie. As long as there are bicycles, there shall be bicycle races, legal or illegal; impromptu or organised.
If cycling is not "your" sport, please understand, for many people, it is "our" sport, and represents as healthy and fulfilling niche in society as football, rugby, badminton, curling... even, dare I say it, golf, which I have personal reservations about due to the environmental damage that its pursuit can entail.
With cycling as a sport established, I can move onto the roads. That is, if people will let me.
It is crazy. Crazy that I should feel fear, every night, to participate in the sport that I love. Crazy that I should find myself hovering at the door, wondering if I can push myself for another 3 hours, not because I am physically tired, but because I can't stand the confrontation any more. The sensation of being unwanted, out of place. Like a ballerina in a boxing ring, I feel like I am setting myself up for a fall. It is crazy that some of my friends should feel the need to bring video cameras to document their training, the shadow of a policeman behind the tutu. Like a strip-search on the way into the football training ground, it is a symbol of distrust ten times more powerful than a high-vis vest or a helmet. It is a bold accusation to everyone else on the road - a sign saying "I know you want to hurt me, but I'll make sure you pay if you do."
I hate that he is probably right.
Cycling is a low-impact aerobic sport, primarily. To be successful in it, one requires a good deal of aerobic training, and a good field of competitors against whom to pit yourself against. Without a "grass roots", there would not be a Team Sky.
So there are numbers of us - maybe thousands, maybe tens of thousands - who must train. We accept that we will never be "the next Wiggo", but we are there at the grass roots. Racing for the thrill, providing the fodder for the greats but bettering ourselves race on race and season on season. This training can be hard, and it must fit around who we are.
As a young man with few attachments, I can afford to give myself 3 hours training a day after work, and 6 hours a day on the weekend, for this base training period. The time taken for this will naturally overlap with the time that some people will be travelling to and from work, or to friends, or to pick up their children, in cars. In the morning, I would run a higher risk of ice or of running late, so I train in the evening.
It is not possible to train in a gym for 30 hours per week at aerobic intensities. It would drive any sane person mad, and leave any mad person drenched in their own sweat night after night.
It is not possible for me to train off-road for all of this time. Off-road tracks are shared with pedestrians and dogs. They can only be safely traversed with a mountain bike, because multiple punctures or snapped spokes thirty miles from home on an inaccessible cycle track in the pouring rain at a few degrees above zero are a dangerous proposition. In the case of freezing weather, they cannot be used at all due to untreated surfaces. In windy weather, they frequently cannot be used due to the threat of falling branches.
That is why I am there, on the road, slogging along, as you get stuck behind me in the pitch dark.
Let me make this clear, though. You are usually not caught behind me because I am a cyclist. You can overtake cyclists. Usually, you are trapped behind me because of oncoming traffic. If they, or you, were on bicycles, this "problem" would not exist. Remember that.
So that is why I am there. What of my behaviour?
What of it?
I do my best to behave myself, even though I see infractions on all sides, day in, day out. It seems, though, that, to many people, this doesn't matter. Many cyclists break the rules, therefore they are involved in accidents.
I may be jumping to conclusions, but I am willing to bet that Bradley Wiggins did not break the rules. I am willing to bet that Shane Sutton did not break the rules.
Spend any time reading the racing press, following club fora or just being involved in cycling, and you very quickly become aware that these accidents and deaths are not just occurring to people caught on the inside of lorries in cities. Riders, good riders, excellent riders, from grassroots to international elite, are involved in collisions with blithely unaware drivers.
Do not pass the blame onto bad cyclists.
That is my job.
What bad cyclists are doing is allowing the issues to be diverted. They are allowing drivers to consider cyclists as "other", as "rule flouters". They are allowing drivers to become disengaged, because they feel that the threat to cyclists comes from the behaviour of the cyclists themselves.
In the case of Wiggins? In the case of Sutton?
Complacent drivers are the biggest hazard I come across. Those that don't look. Those that assume it's clear. Even more so than the cut-in, aggressive, vicious weaponised madmen on the road. At least they know where you are when they intimidate you. No, for me, it's the person who doesn't worry about cyclists. Who hasn't had a "near miss". Who only sees cyclists when they are misbehaving.
It is these drivers that I see as most dangerous, and, so long as there is argument about the actions of cyclists, they are the people disengaged from the message.
It is true that a number of drivers do not realise the reality of riding on roads, and on cycle paths. They do not realise that on an unknown road, a cyclist may not use the cycle lane because (1) they may not even have realised it exists, since they certainly cannot be guaranteed. (2) They may not know where the path ends, and do not wish to be exposed to the frequent bad junctions that cycle paths lead them to. (3) They do not know where the path will take them full stop, because they are frequently poorly labeled. (4) The surface cannot be guaranteed to allow them to complete their journey. (5) There may be large numbers of potentially oblivious pedestrians or dogs using the cycle path... and so on. Similarly, many cyclists do not know how visible they are. It is difficult to get a good idea of how brightly lit you are when compared to the numerous different lighting conditions that a cyclist may go through on a ride, from pitch black (usually fairly visible, so long as there is some light on board) to full sodium floodlamps (how much does a high-vis stand out when the whole street is orange and covered in specular reflections from car windshields?). I cannot guarantee that a cyclist will take criticism well, because of the antagonism that is part-and-parcel of being on the road at the moment, but, from another cyclist, or, said politely, enough times, they may change their habits. They may find another £5 and get a secondary rear light. They may realise their battery needs replacing.
I know that I am pro-cyclist. I know that I believe that responsibility should follow the Copenhagen model. I can sympathise, though, with drivers. I do know that cyclists can be hard to spot, and that inexperienced cyclists can struggle to know when they are hard to spot, such as in areas of high contrast, when, if unlit, a cyclist must purely and simply expect to need to take evasive action - you wouldn't race full-pelt through fog, so why would you in any other situation of limited visibility? Similarly, I know that a small, steady light is still very difficult to spot in a street of specular reflections. It does take a second look.
That said: take the second look.
I will try to share what I know. I will try to reduce the mistakes made by myself, and by those I can communicate with. But people do not and cannot be expected to know everything. In some of the spurious arguments from the cyclist side, I see myself from merely a few years ago. We must make the time to think through what we can do to help motorists keep us safe, and how we can protect pedestrians. Motorists must take the time to look, to "think bike", to expect us as the rule, not the exception.
We alll need to think ahead to the next accident.
Otherwise, we can only learn from our mistakes.
