VIDEO NASTY
Ned tires of cyclist/motorist equivalence
Isat down intending to write some simple, heartening festive musings, but instead, I find myself drawn to the bleak, dry subject of road safety. So, sorry about that. But if you’re not fed up with mince pies, Xmas specials and Reviews of the Year already, then you haven’t been concentrating.
All this killjoy behaviour stems from the latest thing on the internet that has made me very cross. The internet, of course, was seemingly designed for generating and communicating things which make you very cross, so there should be no surprise that I’ve stumbled over another. It came in the form of a video which recently accompanied Transport for London’s “Let’s All Play Nicely” Campaign (I’m not totally sure that is what is was actually called, but you get the drift).*
The video, which has been artfully filmed, features an everyday road scene in London in which a young female motorist and a middle-aged, beardy cyclist narrowly avoid a collision, and then set about having an almighty row through the closed windows of her car. The message of the film is that we should all chill and “see the other side”.
It’s seriously strange. For a start, and presumably because the film makers decided against apportioning any blame for the near-collision, there is no obvious reason why both people suddenly hit the brakes and look freaked out. Neither seems to veer from their line. So, that’s a load of nonsense. But it seems clear that the cyclist has been spooked by some sort of implied close pass. Anyone with experience of riding a bike in the midst of heavy motor traffic will recognise his instinctual anger. He has been seriously scared, the film suggests.
The driver of the car, at first ashen-faced, as if she has just avoided running him over, shouts too. The two actors end up in an unseemly bawling match.
The red mist. Where it comes from is clear enough, on a bike, anyway. In no other area of my life am I as prone to exploding with sudden and surprising intensity into blistering rage as I am when edged into the kerb by an oblivious motorist, unaware that they are physically shunting me with a massive metal box designed to shield them from collision. Nothing else comes close to the instant lack of control I experience when my life has just been threatened in this manner. I am not proud of this one bit. It’s a kind of animal reflex I find hard to control, if easy to explain.
You see, there is no equivalence in the experience of the two road users. This is the point that the film fails so dangerously to grasp. I use the word “dangerously” advisedly: any officially sanctioned safety campaigns that equate the harm meted out by cyclists to the daily death and bereavement individuals and families suffer at the hands of the motorists of this country is legitimising a completely spurious and ill-founded belief that “cyclists are a menace” and that the roads belong to cars.
Who signed off on this crapulous messaging? Some “creatives” who think it’s wonderful. There are too many people in positions of influence and power across all sorts of institutions who have no lived experience of cycling. This lack of understanding appears every time utilitarian cycling enters the public realm, in areas from policy-making to media-messaging.
What can be done? The real answer is for our numbers to swell until the tipping point is reached: that mythical moment when everyone can imagine the roar of revving engine slip up on their right side, and the gust of wind as the wing mirror and spinning wheel of another close pass leave us breathless, furious and glad to be alive. Happy Christmas, readers. Keep up the good fight.
“The film so dangerously fails to grasp that there is no equivalence in the experience of the two road users”
* Since this article was written, Transport for London has taken down the video and halted its campaign while it “considers the feedback that has been received”.