As a motorcyclist, I am used to observing a fairly minimal set of rules on the road.When you're on the move, pretty much anything goes, and provided you don't get in their way, cars don't seem to mind this. Hell, I was let loose on the roads legally with only a day's training – half of which was in a school playground – so the government can hardly complain about my generous interpretation of the rules.
I'm sure that my approach to driving could be construed in some way a form of "middle class anti social behaviour". However, there is one group of road users, far more middle class than motorcyclists, whose total lawlessness never ceases to shock me. I'm talking about pushbikes.
In south Lincolnshire, where I grew up in the late 80s, people who couldn't afford cars or who were banned from driving due to congenital idiocy of some form or another went around on bikes. Typically, these were ramshackle pre-war contraptions that must have weighed as much as a Smart Car. Most of these cyclists went around well below walking speed – in stark refutation of numerous laws of physics.
Today, however, cyclists seem to fall into two categories. Firstly, the larval phase – when they go around in hoodies on preposterously small BMXs, which are essentially a form of portable chair rather than a mode of transport. And as my dear wife, Elvira of Castille, regularly notes, when they are on the move they're generally doing a wheelie.
Some of these metamorphasise into boy racers, but around 16 or so the rest must pupate and emerge fully clad in sponsor-bedecked lycra, mirror shades and a look of smug superiority – the mature cyclist imago.
Look cyclists – there's really no need to dress like that. You're not on the Tour de France. You're going to work in an office, same as the rest of us. You have to wonder how many of them have had a ball chopped off to closer resemble Lance Armstrong.
But I'm not here to talk about aesthetics, although I'd be willing to forgive a lot more if they didn't look so absurd. I'm here to point out, for example, that red traffic lights don't mean "slow down slightly until you've gone past the light"; that ringing your bell does not give you permission to mount the pavement and proceed at 30 mph down it. Stuff like that.
If you're going to use the road, then act like a proper road user and spare a thought for everyone else trying to drive around you. If you're going to act like a pedestrian, then get off your bloody bike.
God, they annoy me.
It's jealousy, obviously. I wish I didn't have a numberplate so I could go past speed cameras as fast as I liked without getting caught. I wish I didn't have mirrors so that I could swerve all over the road without any regard to what's behind me. I wish that my preferred form of transport produced no emissions, so that no matter how selfish, dangerous and thoughtless my behaviour was, it was justified by my inherent moral superiority.
Maybe I hate cyclists because I'm a failed cyclist. I used to bike to the station and back every day. It's about a mile – downhill on the way there, uphill on the way back. I'd get home on the brink of a heart attack.
I gave it up and got a scooter.
So now, every day I dress up like a Serbian paramilitary and (occasionally) drive on the wrong side of the road to get to the front of queues at traffic lights.
But at least I stop and wait for a green light. You've got to have some standards.
