BBC Breakfast Buffoonery

Yesterday I was contacted by the BBC...... A few years ago that would have filled me with excitement.

The BBC....want to speak to me?!? Wow.

I am of course a little bit longer in the tooth now and treat every approach by the media, who want me to talk about cycling, with caution. In fact I was recently contacted by a media company who were keen on 'doing a documentary based on my videos'. When I wrote back pointing out that I would want details of the scope, the narrative, and information on who else who would be taking part in the documentary.....I never heard from them again.

BBC: We would like to discuss the issues surrounding the recent cycling deaths in London.

Tragic. Absolutely tragic. Five people who happened to be cycling dying in the space of 9 days is a terrible statistic. Yes it may be a statistical anomaly that they have been group together in such a small time frame, but each death is a terrible loss, and five at once only serves to strengthen the feeling that much, MUCH more needs to be done to make cycling safer.

Mmm....I thought....this is the BBC, surely they would take this issue seriously considering the gravity of the situation. They wouldn't fall into the cliché of victim blaming....would they?

So on Friday morning I dragged myself out of bed early, left the bike behind (such a shame as it looked like a nice morning for a cycle) an hopped into a tax payer funded taxi, on my way to the BBC Scotland studios for my remote link up with the BBC Breakfast studios in Salford. On the way I noted how much the taxi driver loved being very, very close to the vehicle in front. Luckily he never came across any cyclists as I only saw one cyclist, and he was going the other way....

Once at the BBC and once they realised that, yes, I was actually supposed to be there (to be fair the chap on reception was very nice!), and after I remembered that today was Children in Need (which explained why a few folk were running around looking stressed), I was whisked off upstairs to the surprisingly open studio.

My dreams were shattered when I saw that the view of Glasgow behind Glasgow interviewees was not a window, but a camera feed.....

After a slight mix up, when the technical people thought I was in the studio on the floor below and had hooked up the wrong studio.....I was linked in and could hear that my item was starting. The piece itself started off as expected with a question to the British Cycling chap in the Salford studio first and then the inevitable showing of my 20cm from Death video with me talking through it. I knew this was of interest, but I didn't want to talk too much about it. I wanted to leave time to say the important bits .... infrastructure .....people not cyclists...etc.

And then I heard Charlie utter the word 'but...'

Instantly both myself and the British Cycling chap (Martin Key) knew what was coming. The, 'yes it's all very good that you want to be safer, but we car drivers are more important' rebuttal. The only question was, which rebuttal would oor Charlie (I feel like I'm on first name terms with him now...) use.

.....but......cyclists often run red lights.....blah, blah, blah....

Oh well, at least it wasn't road tax.

The BC chap took the brunt of it, and I was left to fume a little off camera, frustrated by the fact that I was far to far away to point my finger angrily (yes I am avoiding thoughts of violence...) in wee Charlie's face, whilst pouring scorn on such an insulting comment. By the time the question had come back around to me my logical brain had kicked in and I rebutted his rebuttal with what I hope people think is common sense.

Here is the video.



Was my form of reply the best approach? Probably. Did I want to to turn around to Charlie and point out that in fact we have no information on the cause of the recent deaths, and that it was frankly insulting to insinuate that the cyclists were at fault when in fact there was no evidence of that, and he was in fact falling into the same old prejudices that many commentators do?

Yes.

I didn't, but that's why I'm glad I can say it here.

So how do we combat this prejudiced approach to cyclists?

Did you see what I did there?

I gave you a clue in the question. I used the word cyclists. We have reached a situation when the word cyclist is synonymous with 'red light jumping', 'pavement cycling', 'Lycra louts' and any other prejudice bingo term you'd care to mention. We need to stop talking about cyclists, we need to stop talking about drivers, and we need to stop talking about pedestrians.

We need to start talking about people.

Start talking about people, and start talking about people who are road users. Yes, some of those road users are using different forms of transport, but each one has a equal right to use the roads, and each one has an equal right to safety. We also need to recognise that all of these transport choices are not equal in other ways, that is their effect on the environment, their effect on pollution and most importantly their effect on the safety of other road users. Then we need to look at each and every road and work out how we can level the playing field so that everyone can be, equally safe.

Look at the BBC Breakfast video again. Watch it closely. Watch the video of my incident and the video of the 'cyclist on cyclist' incident. There is one very big difference. Firstly, in my incident there was no collision. Thank God for that. Had there been, then I would likely have been a statistic, my children would have lost their dad and this blog would never have existed. In the other incident, the two (and I'll revert back to my preferred nomenclature here) road users on bikes, actually do collide and at a reasonable speed. Yet, both of them remain standing, both of them probably didn't suffer a scratch and both of them can walk away and tell the story about what an idiot the other road user was.

Has there ever been a clearer, unintended, media example of the differences in risk associated with different forms of transport? The cycling road users posed only a very small risk to each other. Yes, one of them was a complete idiot, but the greatest risk he posed was to himself, should he have come into conflict with a larger road user. The HGV on the other hand could have killed me with even the slightest of contact.

Should we ban HGVs from the roads? No, though London does have some short term issues to deal with in that regard. Should we waste our energy blaming cyclists for running red lights when in fact they risk almost only themselves? Or, should we perhaps move past these petty playground arguments and face the reality that our roads, as they stand are not designed for cyclists and just get on with the job of rectifying that anomaly?

What do you think Charlie?