Cyclists. I’ve become a tolerant cove in my old age but if there’s one word certain to raise my dander, it’s cyclists. In Brighton they think they own the place, enabled by successive stupid councils, who have spent tens of thousands of pounds on cycle lanes and those eyesore e-bikes all over town. With a murderous version of droit de seigneur – at odds with their right-on, self-righteous self-image – cyclists appear to believe that walkers are a lower order who they are free to run over as they please.
Cyclists in Brighton seem particularly fond of riding on pavements, where the most damage can be done. It’s like they see pedestrians as targets in some sort of video game – ten points for a man, 20 for a woman, 50 for a child. And it’s not just Brighton; London sounds a pedestrian’s nightmare. I asked around on Facebook and got nearly two hundred horror stories in a few hours:
One cyclist grabbed hold of my wing mirror then fell over as I drove over a speed bump. I stopped to ask if he was OK and he brandished a chain and tried to smash my car window with my two-year-old inside.
I got knocked into the middle of a busy road by a cyclist who ignored the red traffic light. He satisfyingly went flying over his handlebars into a building. Later I had concussion.
Driving through London with one particularly self-righteous middle-aged male cyclist who very blatantly and dangerously cut us up in traffic – and when my husband called him a wanker (without realising the guy could lip-read), he proceeded to follow us down the road, banging on the car door and roof. We were stuck in a queue and couldn’t get away from him.
I was crossing the road on a zebra crossing in Mayfair, when a cyclist came out of nowhere so close behind me that he gave me a shove with his hand to push me out of the way. I shouted at him and called him a ‘fucking arsehole’. He immediately turned his bike around and tried to ram me with it. He followed me into Shepherd Market and was shouting at me, calling me a bitch, when thankfully my friend – who owns a dry cleaners and was built like Arnold Schwarzenegger – came running out and chased him away.
I had one try to run me over at a zebra crossing, call me a ‘cunt’ and when I returned the insult he followed me, demanding my business card so he could sue me for defamation, all while wearing those stupid tight shiny clothes and elf shoes.
My daughter got run over by a cyclist on her way to school – he didn’t even stop to check she was OK.
#NotAllCyclists, of course – but a very large percentage indeed. As another cyclist friend told me: ‘The worse the bad ones behave, the more they ruin it for the few good ones left. There are now a large number of cyclists who ignore the rules of the road, so drivers and pedestrians get massively pissed off and hate all of them. If you state you are a cyclist now, you have to caveat by saying “I’m not a MAMIL” [pejorative acronym for “middle-aged man in Lycra”] because their behaviour has ruined cycling for the rest of us.’
Here in Brighton, pedestrians risk life and limb when seeking to take a stroll on the seafront – and even more annoyingly, on actual pavements. Rule 64 of the Highway Code states that cyclists must not ride on pavements, which, according to Sussex Police, is enforceable by law. But Sussex Police are notoriously woke, to the point that in 2022 the Telegraph reported that they became indignant over the possible hurting of a paedophile sex abuser’s feelings by ‘misgendering’. ‘Sussex Police do not tolerate any hateful comments towards their gender identity regardless of crimes committed,’ they huffed of a transvestite who abused five girls and two boys aged between six and 15. Of course they’re going to turn a blind eye to cyclists’ misdemeanours; like policemen dancing with climate change protesters who are blocking traffic, including ambulances, they’ve been well and truly kind-washed. Cyclists are left to do as they please.
Here in Brighton, pedestrians risk life and limb when seeking to take a stroll on the seafront
I’ve found that people who support green politics are slightly nastier than others in their everyday life, feeling that they had ticked the nice box and therefore somehow won the right to be nasty. When I was a volunteer at a blind home a while ago, I’d regularly take a couple of sightless ladies out for a walk; we’d set out along the bustling main streets of our city, one on each arm, only for me to have to shove them roughly into the nearest doorway as some hulking brute drove a bike at us right there on the pavement.
Inevitably, people have been killed by cyclists; when they are, sentencing is risible. Until last year it was based on legislation from 1861 only allowing for a maximum two-year sentence; things are better now, but cyclists who kill are still treated far more leniently than motorists.
It’s not being paranoid to believe that a lot of this behaviour is another form of male violence towards women, as female cyclists also report frequent harassment by their male counterparts. Victoria Pendleton said: ‘If I’m out about on my road bike and I overtake a man, I will hear a rapid crunching of gears as they try to “make amends for it”… usually followed with a pedal-mashing stomp past me.’
Shouting abuse at women for no reason as they cycle by is everyday behaviour; my friend Ruth, in Wales, says: ‘They often swear at me if I’m walking on their pavement, but never a peep if my husband is with me.’ We used to laugh at men with big cars and say they were compensating for lack of size elsewhere; I’d definitely say the same of the dander-raising MAMILs.
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