Why I Really Hate Cyclists
by David Thomas

There are laws. There are stupid laws. And then there is Euro-legislation. You might have thought that the bureaucrats in Brussels could never create a rule more absurd than those requiring straight-only cucumbers or the supposedly anti-pollution measures that have left Britain's countryside littered with rusty fridges.

But proposed rules making motorists responsible for any accident involving a cyclist, irrespective of who was in the wrong, cap the lot.

Imagine that you are driving blamelessly down the road at a sensible speed when you are broadsided by a drunk cyclist who has just passed a red light doing a wheelie and is chatting on a mobile phone.

In any rational universe, he would take responsibility for the damage and any injuries he suffered.

But rationality and Europe are two mutually contradictory concepts. By the terms of the proposed new legislation, the motorist would have to cover the costs of damage to his car, the bike and any compensation for the cyclist's injuries.

Forget the rights and wrongs of any particular accident. Forget such old-fashioned concepts as responsibility, evidence or justice. To the all-powerful anti-car lobby, all motorists are bike=bashing, pedestrian-chasing baddies who must be punished.

In the short run, these new rules will hike already-rocketing motor insurance premiums. In the long term, the effect will be to reduce still further the respect that the average citizen has for the law.

Increasingly, legislation seems designed not to reflect the needs or views of society as a whole, but to promote the minority interests and perverse ideologies of the ultraliberal, eco-fanatical, pointy-headed policy wonks who inhabit the bureaucracies of Westminster and Brussels.

In this particular case, their belief is that cars are, by definition, bad.

They cause pollution. They cause accidents. Above all, they enable citizens to go wherever they want, whenever they want, without reference to schedules laid down by bureaucrats.

On the other hand, state-run buses and trains are good. And the only acceptable form of private transport is the nonpolluting, eco-friendly, man - sorry! - person-powered bicycle.

This presumption of moral superiority is shared by cyclists themselves. Many believe that the moment they pull their brown rice-stuffed torsos into a lurid Lycra body-sausage, or put on a helmet shaped like a Mr Whippy ice cream, the normal rules of the road cease to apply.

In cities, they routinely ignore traffic lights, race along pavements, overtake on the inside and maneuver without signaling - all contrary to the Highway Code.

Some - the so-called 'bicycle guerillas' - are aggressively antisocial, daring anyone to cross them as they blatantly defy the law. Others - usually middle-class Guardian-reading types - are marginally less criminal, but no less irritating.

They wear their self-righteousness like a suit of armour, and are constantly on the lookout for the chance to fling four-lettered abuse at any petrol-powered capitalist who provokes their disapproval.

In the country, cyclists (a substantial proportion of whom sport beards, baggy shorts and thin, white, hairy legs) use different tactics to enrage motorists. Their favourite is to ride very slowly, wobbling and wiggling, two or three abreast.

This enables them to occupy an entire lane. Since rural roads are often winding, with few opportunities to pass, motorists are forced either to crawl behind them at 5mph or risk their lives by overtaking around blind corners.

Should one dare to toot the horn or politely suggest that they might care to occupy rather less of the road, a volley of real ale-quaffing, folk-singing, sandal-wearing abuse is guaranteed.

I admit my views are one-sided, but I spent much of my youth cycling so I know that the roads are filled with lunatic motorists who are utterly heedless of cyclists, or relentlessly antagonistic to them.

These days, I won't let my own teenage children cycle on our local roads because they are filled with shaven-headed yobos driving at crazy speeds or by half-blind pensioners who wouldn't see a bike if it were illuminated by portable Blackpool illuminations.

Drivers are just as bad as cyclists. But they are not, by definition, worse.

Not, of course, unless you're a Eurocrat who has sanctified the cyclist and given the green light to politically-correct Pedalistas to do whatever they fancy, safe in the knowledge that nothing that happens as a result of their behaviour will ever be their fault.

Meanwhile, motorists will be even more tempted to drive without insurance rather than pay excessive premiums.

Once again, the law of unintended consequences will prove more powerful than any legislation Brussels can create and the effect will be the exact opposite of that intended.

The Eurocrats should listen to that arch-Euro-sceptic Lord Tebbit - get on your bikes and leave the rest of us alone.

reprinted without permission from the Daily Mail, August 5, 2002