There is a particular irony in finding yourself defending cyclists when, for years, you have regarded many of them as a sort of mobile religious movement. Usually dressed head to toe in black lycra like bargain-bin ninja commandos, travelling in tightly packed pelotons, speaking in hushed reverential tones about cadence and carbon fibre while simultaneously ignoring every red light between Cheltenham and Cirencester.
I have often thought that if a normal motorist behaved with the same tribal certainty as a Sunday cycling posse, there would be national outrage. Imagine eight men in matching Audi jackets driving side-by-side at 14 mph while discussing electrolytes and artisanal flapjacks. The police helicopter would be deployed by lunchtime.
And yet, the other day, there I was on a bicycle myself, crossing a large roundabout properly, legally and cautiously, only to be greeted by the automotive equivalent of an air horn blast from somebody who had entered the roundabout at approximately the same speed used by Royal Navy destroyers intercepting narcotics traffickers in the Gulf.
The truth is that large roundabouts reveal something deeply odd about British driving culture.
People approach them not as junctions requiring caution, but as performance challenges. There is a quiet national belief that if one can maintain speed throughout the manoeuvre without touching the brake pedal, one has somehow achieved engineering greatness. Clarksonism distilled into infrastructure.
This particular chap came from the opposite side of the roundabout. Because of the size and curvature, he could not see me until he had already committed himself. Which, in a sane world, would suggest he ought perhaps to have entered a little more cautiously. Instead, the logic appears to have been:
“I did not anticipate another road user existing there, therefore the other road user is clearly at fault.”
This is becoming increasingly common. The modern British motorist often treats unexpected events not as information requiring adaptation, but as personal insults. If something appears ahead requiring braking, the horn must immediately be sounded so that nearby villagers understand a grave injustice has occurred.
And I do understand some of the irritation drivers feel toward cyclists. I really do. There are cyclists who seem to dress specifically to resemble unlit bin bags drifting through the dusk. There are others who travel in intimidating swarms with the collective road awareness of migrating wildebeest. Some behave as though the Highway Code was written purely as a series of optional suggestions for lesser beings.
As an aside, cyclists also seem oddly resistant to the idea that visibility matters. Many will spend four thousand pounds on a bicycle made from aerospace-grade carbon fibre, shave ten grams off a saddle clamp, and then ride through dappled woodland sunlight dressed entirely in matte black on a black bicycle wearing a black helmet. In their minds they are visible because they themselves can see perfectly well. Unfortunately, that is not how human vision works. A tired van driver glancing through a fly-splattered windscreen does not perceive “enthusiastic cyclist”. He perceives a fleeting disturbance in the shadows shortly before his insurance premium rises.
But the uncomfortable reality is that on a large roundabout, a cyclist is terrifyingly vulnerable even when doing everything correctly.
The driver who beeped me probably went home convinced he had narrowly avoided catastrophe thanks to his own lightning reactions. In reality, the catastrophe was avoided because I had already spent the entire manoeuvre assuming somebody would eventually appear at speed having mistaken the roundabout for the opening stage of the British Touring Car Championship.
That, in the end, is the real problem. Roads now operate increasingly on assumption rather than observation. Everybody expects everybody else to vanish conveniently from their path. Drivers assume cyclists will hug the kerb. Cyclists assume drivers have seen them. SUV owners assume the laws of physics are now merely advisory because they are sitting three feet higher than everybody else.
And hovering over all of it is the horn. That magnificent British instrument of moral self-certification.
Not:
“Sorry mate, didn’t see you.”
Never that.
Always:
“How dare you exist where I intended to continue travelling quickly.”
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