Cyclists Fight Back

I've been annoying some petrolheads over at David Thompson's blog by declaring my militant cyclism. 

The point of David Thompson's post is that George Monbiot (an environmentalist) is a puritan kill joy while Jeremy Clarkson (presenter of Top Gear) is an entertaining life-enhancing fellow.  Jeremy Clarkson is an accelerator addict and a sworn enemy of environmentalists.

I found a useful manifesto against cycling from someone with pretty much the same mindset as Jeremy Clarkson, P J O'Rourke, who is another internal combusting hedonist and humourist. So here are the words of that particular roadkill maker and my replies:-

A Cool and Logical Analysis of the Bicycle Menace

Our nation is afflicted with a plague of bicycles. Everywhere the public right-of-way is glutted with whirring, unbalanced contraptions of rubber, wire, and cheap steel pipe. Riders of these flimsy appliances pay no heed to stop signs or red lights. They dart from between parked cars, dash along double yellow lines, and whiz through crosswalks right over the toes of law-abiding citizens like me.

The toes of law-abiding citizens?  Don't tell me you were walking, for once in your life.  And, ad hominem, the only time PJO does walk is when he's drunk, so you were probably staggering and not looking where you were going, as often happens with pedestrians. I run into them all the time.

But, of course the hysterical gas user has a valid point.  Some cyclists do not follow stop signs or red lights.  I and all other responsible cyclists do not condone such behaviour.  But we should examine the root causes of why the spandex wearers charge around in such a wild lawless fashion and perhaps find that they are acting as the alienated and disaffected and discriminated against minority have always acted.  See them as over zealous protestors.

Viet Cong on bicycles

The ungainly geometry and primitive mechanicals of the bicycle are an offense to the eye. The grimy and perspiring riders of the bicycle are an offense to the nose. And the very existence of the bicycle is an offense to reason and wisdom.

The mechanicals of a bicycle are not primitive but extremely sophisticated.  In terms of energy expended for distance gained they are the most efficient form of transport. They reached their present form of perfection at the end of the nineteenth century, just at the time when the internal combustion engine was being developed.  Their form is classic, altered in no significant degree, whereas designers have to constantly fuss around with a car's shape and colour, like neurotic adolescent girls trying on different clothes and changing their hairstyles. A car is a small room on wheels driven by agoraphobics.  Car drivers are grubs who crawl into cocoons but who never emerge waving their wings.

Safety bicycle 1887. 

PRINCIPAL ARGUMENTS WHICH MAY BE MARSHALED AGAINST BICYCLES

1. Bicycles are childish

Bicycles have their proper place, and that place is under small boys delivering evening papers. Insofar as children are too short to see over the dashboards of cars and too small to keep motorcycles upright at intersections, bicycles are suitable vehicles for them.

And so are boy racers and macho metal movers who can't bear that something cheaper than their vehicle flies past them as they sit in fuming gridlock.  So nyaah nyaah to you.

2. Bicycles are undignified

It is impossible for an adult to sit on a bicycle without looking the fool. There is a type of woman, in particular, who should never assume the bicycling posture. This is the woman of ample proportions. Standing on her own feet she is a figure to admire - classical in her beauty and a symbol, throughout history, of sensuality, maternal virtue, and plenty. Mounted on a bicycle, she is a laughingstock.

Here I have to admit that when most people think cool they think James Bond in an Aston Martin.  Or Steve McQueen on a motorbike.  Or Clint Eastwood on a horse.  They don't think of me on a bicycle (I am a woman of ample proportions).  And those helmets make you look like a pratt.  We need some work from the propaganda wing - I am especially thinking of an urban thriller where the car chasing villains will be out-manoeuvred by a heroic cyclist slipping down alleys and canal paths.   We should develop the image of the heroism of the guerrilla fighter against the imperialist tank in asymmetrical warfare.  Even suicide bombers can be eulogised and have their posters displayed so why can't we as well?  In fact every commuting day I should be recording a video stating my likely appointment with death.

Some girls looking very pretty  on bicycles. 
But they would look equally pretty not on bicycles.

3. Bicycles are unsafe

Bicycles are top-heavy, have poor brakes, and provide no protection to their riders. Bicycles are also made up of many hard and sharp components which, in collision, can do grave damage to people and the paint finish on automobiles. Bicycles are dangerous things.

Of course, there's nothing wrong, per se, with dangerous things. Speedboats, racecars, fine shotguns, whiskey, and love are all very dangerous. Bicycles, however, are dangerous without being any fun.

They are unsafe in the same way that being in the resistance in an occupied country is unsafe, or a dissident in Russia is unsafe or a woman teacher under the Taliban is unsafe. 

The dangers listed are the manly dangers requiring bigging yourself up with a load of equipment.  There are those who can't see a beautiful sylvan loch without wanting to water ski on it.  There are those that cannot see a deer running through the woods without wanting to shoot it.  There is nothing you can do with such a mindset except to deprive it of as much opportunity as you can.  And roll your eyes when it boasts of its exploits.

4. Bicycles are un-American

We are a nation that worships speed and power. And for good reason. Without power we would still be part of England [this was written in 1987] and everybody would be out of work. And if it weren't for speed, it would take us all months to fly to L.A., get involved in the movie business, and become rich and famous.

Bicycles are too slow and impuissant for a country like ours. They belong in Czechoslovakia.

There are lots of cheap jokes to be made here.  "A nation that worships speed and power".  Well why are so many of you fat slugs who can't climb stairs?  And always whining to shrinks or Oprah Winfrey?  And attacking others and defending yourselves sheltered behind lawyers?  Raw life is too much for you, you have to pad yourself in a Humvee.  Your cars may have speed and power.  It doesn't follow that you do.  And Czechoslovakia as it used to be known is famed for its delicious beer while yours is baby's pee.

5. I don't like the kind of people who ride bicycles

At least I think I don't. I don't actually know anyone who rides a bicycle. But the people I see on bicycles look like organic-gardening zealots who advocate federal regulation of bedtime and want American foreign policy to be dictated by UNICEF. These people should be confined.

Yes, we are the do-gooders, the eco-heads, the righteous.  Indeed when I lock up my cycle in the car park under my office and regard the big guys in the firm getting out of their BMWs and Porsches I have all the deep moral satisfaction of those who are poorer and more virtuous and I distinctly see a gleam of unease in their eyes.  The petrolheads are afraid of the cyclists as the American WASPs were afraid of the waves of different ethnics - Irish, Jewish, Hispanic - that came and menaced them and their way of life.  For "dislike" read "fear".

6. Bicycles are unfair

Bicycles use the same roads as cars and trucks yet they pay no gasoline tax, carry no license plates, are not required to have insurance, and are not subject to DOT, CAFE, or NHTSA regulations. Furthermore, bicyclists do not have to take driver's examinations, have eye tests when they're over sixty-five, carry registration papers with them, or submit to breathalyzer tests under the threat of law. And they never get caught in radar traps.

Yes, on mentioning fairness, anything that is not as efficient as a bicycle should be banned from the roads.  When I see able-bodied healthy adults transporting their carcasses using  unreasonable amounts of metal and petrol, with all the ramifications of dependence on oil and the consequent difficulties with the states who own the oil, I wonder at the idiocy of the world.  Cars have a complex system of regulations built around them as Louis XIV built an elaborate etiquette around his own divinity at Versailles.  The system was oppressive and ridiculous but was hidden by a pointless busyness.

The resentment felt at the bicycle's freedom comes from over-dressed conservatism.  It is the French cavalry hampered by their massive armour facing the longbows at Agincourt.  And a gesture that cyclists often give to car drivers is in memory of that confrontation.

7. Bicycles are good exercise

And so is swinging through trees on your tail. Mankind has invested more than four million years of evolution in the attempt to avoid physical exertion. Now a group of backward-thinking atavists mounted on foot-powered pairs of Hula-Hoops would have us pumping our legs, gritting our teeth, and searing our lungs as though we were being chased across the Pleistocene savanna by saber-toothed tigers. Think of the hopes, the dreams, the effort, the brilliance, the pure force of will that, over the eons, has gone into the creation of the Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Bicycle riders would have us throw all this on the ash heap of history.

That very Cadillac Coupe de Ville that you use to drive to the gym.

What must be done about about the bicycle threat?

Fortunately, nothing. Frustrated truck drivers and irate cabbies make a point of running bicycles off the road. Terrified old ladies jam umbrella ferrules into wheel spokes as bicycles rush by them on sidewalks. And all of us have occasion to back over bicycles that are haplessly parked.

Bicycles are quiet and slight, difficult for normal motorized humans to see and hear. People pull out in front of bicycles, open car doors in their path, and drive through intersections filled with the things. The insubstantial bicycle and its unshielded rider are defenseless against these actions. It's a simple matter of natural selection. The bicycle will be extinct within the decade. And what a relief that will be.

You describe the perils we face exactly.  And earlier on you had the cheek to complain of our minor infringements of the law.  But we are a wily, sly people, we cyclists and will not be so easily crushed.  In fact our numbers are increasing  According to Spokes, the Edinburgh cycling campaign organisation, cyclists made up about 20% of the commuting traffic in Lothian Road, Edinburgh.  Ten years ago it would have been 5%.  Our cycle paths are taking over the city.  Our habits of mind are coming into the general consciousness.  My colleagues say guiltily to me they really ought to cycle to work.

I love that "normal motorized humans".  Petrolheads think the possession of their private hell cage on wheels as something that is intrinsic to human life, like dwellings.  But cars are a transient thing.  They will go one day, towed away to the scrap yard of history.

Comments

[David Pertuz]

Rosie,

I enjoyed your post, because I suspect I enjoy biking as much as you do, but think that perhaps you could lighten up a bit. I have loved cars my entire life, own four, and work for an automaker. I also love bikes, own three, and ride about 2500 miles/year. I would ride to work if it were practical. P.J. O'Rourke (whom I find very funny, but that's just my taste), wrote a similar piece about 20 years ago, with the same tone, on the grievous meance posed by pedestrians. As we are both pedestrians we coult take offense at him for this too but would both probably agree that it would be a bit silly! I am a "petrolhead" but know better than to take someone like O'Rourke serously - he is a humorist, after all.

[Rosie]

Thank you for your nice comment David. I thought I had written rather in PJO's style of exaggerated diatribe and my post was supposed to be amusing.

Like you I've found PJO funny in the past tho' I think he has gone off a lot lately. He likes pricking pomposity, as do I - and no one is more pompous or self-righteous than a petrolhead asserting their right to rule the roads.

[patrick]

I'm not anti-car (as even a cursory glance at my website will prove) but they are a rather silly way of traversing our cities.

I can get to work on my bike in 15 minutes. I once accepted the offer of a lift home in the pouring rain, and it took nearly an hour. A great piece, beating O'Rourke at his own game.

By the by, am I one of the few people who enjoys both Monbiot's writings and Clarkson on Top Gear?

[Rosie]

I see from your blog you live in Edinburgh. And of course the Council has made it more and more difficult for cars to traverse the city. When I am in a car and the driver is trying to remember the route through one-way, no access and bollard blocked road system
I think there is a giant behavioural psychologist above us, monitoring our movements like rats in mazes. Which of course I am pleased about - thwart the city drivers in every way.

I really liked George Monbiot for the skewering he gave to 9/11 conspiracy theorists and tho' I don't watch Top Gear Jeremy Clarkson has brought a smile to my reluctant lips when I read his columns in The Times. I would like more humour on the environmentalist side of things. Green politics has a rather frumpy image I'm afraid.

[James]

I agree with Rosie, I am a keen cyclist (both on and off road) but also a car user and lover. I could not be without my car (simply couldnt get to and do my other sports) without one. I choose to live out of cities (I love the country) and still choose to ride to work, yet when its aweful weather and I'm ill, I'll take a car.

Unfortunately the exaggerated rantings of blogs like this and the equal anti-cycling rants do nothing for either side. The fact is we need to work together and live together. There are people who do and enjoy both - this doesnt make them evil/stupid etc. There is no reason to break the law, be it in a car OR on a bike.

Maybe when the two sides learn to work together, instead of against each other, we might make some progress. Until then I expect a lot more of these pointless rants.

[Nunya Biz]

"Amusing" would imply funny. Humourous. Entertaining.

None of which it was.

Merely petulant bike-naziism.