
I once tried to kill four men while riding my bicycle.
At the time I felt I was provoked, but looking back now I'm not sure I can be excused. But if I have to blame something - and sometimes you do - I choose to blame cycle paths.
From the first segregated cycling route of the 1930s, to the blue paint ‘Cycle Superhighways’ of 2010 onwards, cycle lanes in London have always been resented by both cyclists and motorists. For motorists they present a mild inconvenience and constant reminder that their road taxes allow unwashed freeloading bicycling scum to regularly clatter their wing-mirrors, for free. For cyclists, however, they represent, at best, an attempt by society to control their cycling and, at worst, a genuine threat to life and limb.
I was cycling before the Congestion Charge and Boris bikes, and it seemed the cycle lanes of my day were designed by well-meaning amateurs who only rode their bicycles to church on a Sunday morning. On my very first test run for my new London commute I obediently followed the London Cycle Network, expecting it to lead me safely to Tower Bridge along a careful threaded path of charming back streets and parks. Instead, it led me straight to the Elephant & Castle roundabout – a revolving column of exhaust smoke thundering with brutally menacing trucks. – and just stopped, as if to say:
‘There you go. Enjoy.’
This was ten years before Google Maps could pick you out an alternative route on your shiny new smartphone, and a long time before Go-Pros and bright LED bicycle headlights were remotely affordable. The name of the game was to know where you were going, in advance, and to have already calibrated the safest way to approach each junction – which you then negotiated as fast as safety allowed.
My route took me past two particularly intimidating roundabouts: the Elephant & Castle, which I’ve already mentioned, and the even faster – and far more exhilarating – Brick Layers Arms Roundabout, some 10 minutes further on and which marks the beginning of the Old Kent Road. Both roundabouts were busy, with multiple lanes and blind spots, so you needed your nerves and your wits about you to take them on – but they were not the most dangerous junction I had to navigate. The winner of that title belonged to Kennington Park, where the A23 joined and crossed the A3.

Think of a piece of barbed wire. The A3 is the main strand, running east from Clapham Common in the west towards to the Elephant & Castle roundabout in a path that is roughly parallel to the River Thames. The A23, on the other hand, runs north from Brighton on the South coast via Croydon and Brixton and intersects the A3 by Kennington park. It joins and leaves the A3 in a way that is not unlike the short pieces of wire that are twisted around the main strand of a wire fence to make the barbs.
The southern end of the A23 turns right onto the A3, via a filter road, at an angle of about 30 degrees. Traffic is controlled by a set of lights, and once traffic has turned onto the A3 it must travel a hundred yards or so along the main strand – in a way roughly corresponding to where the middle part of the barb is twisted around the wire – before it takes a left hand filter off, and back onto, the northern part of the A23 – which roughly corresponds to the end of the second barb. Meanwhile, the main strand of the A3 proceeds straight on and east to Elephant & Castle, stopping only for a set of traffic lights that allows southbound traffic from the northern A23 to join the traffic heading east.
This lane arrangement was all fine and dandy if you were driving a car, or even if you were cycling from the southern section of the A23 to its northern section. But if you were on a bicycle and were joining the A3 from the southern A23 with the intention of going straight east towards Elephant & Castle, you were literally taking your life in your hands.
According to the highway code, cyclists are supposed to keep to the left-hand side of the road. If you’re at a junction and you’re going straight on or right, then the best approach is to make your way to the front of the junction, pick your position and peddle like hell when the lights change. The problem at Kennington was that the twisted shank of the barbed wire that separated each filter was about one hundred yards long, during which traffic heading east, and traffic heading north, would reposition themselves for their required lane. And if you were intending to head east along the A3, and were following the Highway Code and riding on the left hand lane, you would be completely exposed in the middle of the road for one hundred yards – with cars switching lanes all around you.
As stated, roundabouts like the Elephant and Castle and the Bricklayers Arms require bold and confident cycling, but this junction was absolutely Darwinian, in that it really sorted out the hardcore Highway Coders on their bicycles from the mouth breathers in their cars. Some drivers at this junction clearly lacked the imagination to realise that a cyclist might be heading straight on and not simply cycling in the middle of the road just to annoy them. Others considered it an outrageous imposition that a cyclist could dare to presume to add one and a half seconds to their daily commute. Again, not every driver is that stupid, but the rate of traffic at this junction meant that you were pretty much guaranteed to cop abuse from someone whenever you took your chances there in the morning rush hour.
When I took this junction on my test run it was obvious that observing the Highway Code would put my life in danger, so I reassessed and improvised a better approach. Instead of waiting at the lights at the left hand, or the centre, of the road, I took up my position on the outside right. This meant that when the lights went green, I could join the A3 on the far right of the road, hugging the central reservation. From this position, not only would all the traffic be safely visible on my left-hand side, but the car driver in the driver side seat could easily see me. I could then keep well out of the kill zone where the cars were changing lanes until both junctions were behind me and it was safe to drift back to the left-hand side of the road.
And it worked. I had absolutely no trouble with that strategy – ever. But one morning I left it a little too late to cross over to the right hand side of the road at the lights and some fuckwit in a white van pulled up tight to the bumper of the car in front of him, which itself was too close to the kerb to get around, giving me no room to cut across. This meant I was frozen out, stuck in the left-hand gutter with nowhere to go but forward… and into the kill zone.
I knew what was about to happen. I knew within 30 seconds of that light turning green some dick and their car would be fucking with me. So when the light turned and the cars in front had cleared, I struck out like an Olympic sprinter.
I was halfway across the kill zone when my nemesis appeared. I could sense his approach even before I heard the revving, and I could feel my adrenalin start cranking up like a ratchet as the inevitable confrontation roared up behind me.
It was a Range Rover, a big expensive one, and it came up fast and close on my left side. The guy driving was big and bearded and bellied. He had wound down his window and, just as I’d assessed the size, speed and close proximity of his vehicle, barked:
‘Get ORRFF the FAARKING road!!’
I immediately clocked his accent as Irish, that there were four big guys in the car in total, probably builders of some kind or another – and that this piggy-eyed fuck was showing off. And then the Range Rover sped past me, the wing mirror skimming my elbow, leaving me wobbling in its slipstream, jolted and shocked and shaken to my bones.
Perhaps it was because I had known that moment was coming, from before the lights had turned green. Perhaps it was because that, despite this anticipation, he’d still been able to frighten me. But I suddenly found myself transformed by that jolt of fear into an absolutely demonic state of consciousness; my bike instantly became a sentient extension of me and suddenly both of us were acutely calculating the speed of the Range Rover as it took up a position to take the left hand turn onto the northern branch of the A23. I slipped into the blind spot behind the back of the vehicle for a few seconds and started calibrating my timing.
The plan took six seconds to reach perfection. The Range Rover was approaching the traffic island before taking the left-hand turn. This was the island where stood, in martial glory, the traffic light that controlled the flow of vehicles heading straight east along the A3. The light was green.
I swung out to the driver-side of the Rover and, with an explosive burst of pedalling, powered up to the driver-side door, stuck my head in the still-open window and snarled:
‘Get FUCKED you FAT MICK CUNT’
Adrenalin – especially the fighting kind – not only slows down time it also increases the resolution of memory. I can still see him in intense detail as the hate slowly rippled across his face: first starting in a sort of stunned pout, like a shocked baby about to burst into tears, and then his piggy eyes widened and actually bulged as the corners of his mouth dropped. And then I can see his elbows and his big meaty hands haul down at the wheel as he tries to swing the Range Rover to the right – and into me.
And it was at that moment that I knew I had him.
Because a split second later I see his face freeze in mute stupid panic as he realises that, by trying to run me over, he has now put his flash and expensive Range Rover onto a collision course with the imposing traffic light sticking out from the traffic island, the same traffic light that was now green lighting my escape.
That split second was all I had, but it was enough. I knew, and I knew he knew, that I had bested him. I swerved away – on past the lights to the safety of the A3 – as he tried to recorrect his line, and I heard the squeal of brakes and skidding tires and a heavy thud behind me.
I didn’t look back. The adrenalin and my bike were getting me the fuck out of there to safety and there was nothing I could do to stop them.
He could have rolled the car into a fireball and incinerated all the occupants for all I fucking cared.
The next morning, I simply changed my cycling jacket and cycled to work via a different route.
commuting by bicycle
Comments