Let’s hear it for the upright citizens of cycling

Lycra-clad speed freaks should show more respect for those who pedal at a more responsible pace

Asad little statistic rolled out over the Christmas break: Westminster University research finds that of the 3,500 bike riders killed or injured last year – a rising number – the ones most at risk are those cycling more slowly. Cyclists trundling along at under 8mph had far more incidents and near misses than the fast mob, suggesting that when you get to 12mph plus you are more “hardy” and aggressive, so you get treated with more respect by cars and lorry drivers. Speedsters are overtaken less, noticed more, and survive better. Women riders, going slower than men, generally suffer most.

There is a sort of macho idea, especially in the capital, that the fast guys with tight Lycra kit, drop-handlebars and carbon-fibre frames are somehow the norm, the proper cyclists. They look down on the sedate, whether wobbling Boris-bikers or owners of upright machines whose bell Miss Marple would be proud to tinkle with a cheery “Morning, Vicar”. The racingbike set have no respect: on the Today programme edited last week by Sir Bradley Wiggins, himself a politer man, the super-Spad Steve Hilton jeered at Boris Johnson for cycling in a suit, because this meant that either he was smelly all day, or that – horrors – “he was cycling too slowly, to avoid getting hot and sweaty”.

Now what is wrong with cycling at a moderate, decorous Boris-pace, in normal clothes? What is wrong with getting to work in a healthy and responsible way while not dressing and behaving as if training for the Tokyo Olympics? What is wrong with bikes being used, and respected by drivers, simply as a way of getting from place to place in a cheerful, low-carbon manner?

Other countries know this – Chris Boardman, a gold medallist himself, heartily supports Re-Cycle, which sorts out old bikes here and sends them reconditioned to Africa. Musing on the me-too culture he sees growing around his sport, he observes that bikes are just transport, really: in Europe they are just what ordinary people get to work on, wearing perfectly ordinary clobber. He observes that in other capitals “you don’t see ‘cyclists’ ”, just people.

He’s right: recently in Amsterdam I was charmed (and shamed, on London’s behalf) by the way that bikes, pedestrians and motor vehicles weave a courteous ballet around one another. Some 63 per cent of the city’s citizens use their bike daily, nearly half the centre’s traffic is pedalled, and accidents are few. Hardly any of those bikes in sight are racing machines: they’re upright models whose riders can easily see ahead and around them, or pause to appreciate some tulips. Many tow trailers containing children, shopping or dogs; some are tricycles with a brace of babies on the back. It works fine. And most of them are certainly not hitting 12mph in the busy streets.

The rise of cycling here is a fine thing, if marred by a shockingly high accident rate in the cities. The campaign for urban cycleways is splendid. But maybe it’s the wrong kind of cycling that’s muscling in, and those future cycleways will be dominated by rushing, shouting racers crashing around the slower ones. Just as in licensing changes we failed to develop a “Continental drinking culture” but over-indulge and fall over in the gutter instead, so we seem to have trouble adopting a Continental cycling culture, which treats bikes in moderation, as transport rather than equipment for binge-athleticism.

I have nothing but awed respect for our Olympians, for their training in sensible terrain and for fast, organised racing roadbike events. My own son took to the sport and loved it. But high-speed, teeth-clenched, Spandex-twanging sweat-hero cycling seen on many a city street is closer to sport than transport. Many riders, idiotically, actually use racers’ clip-in shoes to fasten their feet to the pedals, even though they must unclip at every set of traffic lights or be dangerously unwilling to slow and stop for a pedestrian. It is this latter behaviour that has now prompted Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the transport minister, to describe cyclists as “the biggest challenge for a commuter in London”.

We do not encourage city roads or pavements to be used for training in other sports: all-in wrestling, rugby scrum practice, the long-jump, the javelin. Why should Lycra-louts dominate shared spaces?

Yet banging on car roofs, crashing into pedestrians, weaving on to the pavement, thinking it’s not proper unless you sweat like a pig and demand a shower at work: some of these high-adrenalin chaps are a menace. And nothing is worse than a menace who insists on occupying the moral high ground because – as we all admit – cycling in principle is good for cities, health, and the planet.

So in 2016 let’s hear it for the Continental, retro world of the gentlefolks’ velocipede – the dignified, gravely pedalling sit-upand-beg slowcoaches admiring the cityscape, nodding greetings to passers-by, giving way to pedestrians. Let’s go Dutch.