The UK desperately needs proper cycling infrastructure with separate cycle lanes. I was thinking about this after driving my car to the office this morning and witnessed lots of near misses from people nearly hitting cyclists.
An argument against this that I hear a lot is "good drivers would just overtake when its safe". This makes me annoyed. It holds no water because in practice human error is a thing. In many other safety critical places we don't argue this point:
- "no need for that PPE lads. Anyone who can't use a crane to manoeuvre a rolled steel joist without dropping it shouldn't be a builder"
- "The local swimming pool could save loads of £££ if they laid off their lifeguards. Anyone who's a good swimmer wouldn't drown"
Human error is a thing even for highly qualified professionals. Doctors who have saved 100s of lives get surgical procedures wrong. Mechanics slip up and damage cars. These risks are minimized via safety processes and infrastructure not by appealing to ego.
Even if all drivers followed the highway code in good faith at all times (which of course in practice is that this is not the case), people have off days, accidents would happen. Some who normally "safely overtakes" might be distracted by bad news about a loved one.
Cycling is a great way for people to get exercise and get to work without burning dinosaur juice or footing the bill that comes from burning said juice. I used to cycle to work but I don't feel safe doing so on roads I have to share with cars any more.
Cycling is here to stay. Instead of drivers shaming cyclists for using "our roads" or shaming each other for not being skilled enough to overtake safely, why don't we lobby councils and Gov't to build adequate infrastructure
Heck I might even go back to cycling if I can do it without worrying about a bad faith driver who wants to get to work 30 seconds earlier or a good faith driver having a bad day.
In summary: be kind. Accept human error as part of our fleeting time under the sun and fight for logical safety mechanisms instead of pretending accidents don't happen and shaming people when they inevitably do happen. And for goodness sake wear a cycle helmet.
