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Commuting by bicycle: an introduction

A cyclist about to crash into a moving car

I wasn’t in the market for advice.


When I decided to commute by bicycle in London in 1998 I knew what I was in for.


I’d spent the previous five years cycling around Edinburgh, which was a much smaller and compact metropolis yet still full of the dangers and aggressions that come with cycling. I’d been doored more than once, stopped counting the times I’d been cut up, or threatened, and even picked up one white van driver who casually tried to run me off the road whenever he saw me. Although I’d kind of asked for that.


I was conspicuous. I wore a big black leather coat that had an six-inch black fur collar, whose conical shape not only protected my face from the biting Scottish wind but would have stopped me licking my wounds, if I was so inclined. And on top of this I wore a black leather flying helmet from the age of biplanes. I either looked roguishly stylish or like a complete tool, depending on your taste and whether you knew I was English or not.


I considered myself a pretty conservative urban cyclist. I rarely cycled drunk, only jumped lights when there was no other traffic (my definition of ‘traffic’ included pedestrians) and always indicated, unless I was carrying something bulky – which was usually some sort of kindling for the open fireplace in my room. I always suspected it was my navigation of a right turn on my local roundabout while holding a fruit crate under my arm that initially pissed off the white van man – but it was definitely my look that turned the incident into a vendetta.


My bicycle was an antique and perfect for the job: it was black, with a deceptively light steel frame, had only one gear and was absolutely un-nickable – I once had someone pick the bike lock and leave the bike and lock there, just to emphasise the point. I had no idea how old it was – this was the days before internet-enabled-bicycle-train-spotting and the best chance to date it was when a frail Scottish gentleman with thinning white hair approached me at a set of lights and told me he’d had an identical bike in his youth. He looked about 80 and so, from that, I reckoned it was made sometime between the two World Wars.


I loved that bike. I used to sidle up to guys riding bright expensive 30 geared mountain bikes with heavy D-locks bolted to their frames and challenge them to a drag at the lights. They used to just look at me in bewilderment.


So, when the time came to buy myself a bike for my commute across South London, I wasn’t really canvassing for the opinions of the self-appointed cognoscenti. I HATED cycle bores and the way they rode eye-wateringly expensive and totally over-specced bikes on city streets as if the world consisted of just them, and their machines – and then complained when their bike was nicked or bust up in collision with a car. They seemed to think of themselves as an elite who could simply transcend the degenerate hoards of humanity that were living all over them through the sacred power of whining. And I soon found out there were even more of these self-appointed geniuses in London than there were in Edinburgh.


My requirements for my new bike were straightforward. It had to be simple and low maintenance, strong enough to ride over a pothole, and have a longer wheelbase than a mountain bike – so I didn’t have to peddle like a child. It needed straight handlebars so I could keep my head up and have a chance of seeing what was coming before it got to me. And it had to be comfortable, as I knew it was likely I’d be spending as much of my time waiting at the lights as cycling.


I opted for a silver GT Jetstream beach cruiser. I admit that it was the the looks of the thing that first caught my eye, but the shop in Camberwell let me take it for a test spin around the local park and I was instantly smitten – principally because it was fast, had a solid frame and excellent balance. I got the shop to swap the wheels out for a more urban mix of hybrid rims and slicks, and once home I changed the drooping ‘Beach cruiser’ handlebars for a Tracker style bar I could lean into when off the saddle. The original seat was padded with springs and extremely comfortable; the sales guy tried to insinuate this was effeminate by telling me about a French girl with a ‘magnificent ass’ who’d spent some time bouncing up and down on it in the shop exclaiming in French how comfortable it was. This just made me want to buy it more.


It cost £350. In 1998 this was about a month and a half of the train fare I was supposed to be spending to get to work. Admittedly I was dodging this most days – I’d pretend to be Spanish on the rare occasion they checked my ticket – but I’d been commuting via London’s appallingly unreliable and expensive public transport since I was 12, and I’d long since had my fill of it. London Transport was filthy and unreliable and I could no longer stomach the thought of sharing the pestilent air of the morose wraiths who used to ride it, grim faced, to their day’s humiliation. I had pretensions to be an adult. The argument in favour of commuting by bicycle in London was settled before it even started.


The only potential downside was an outside chance of getting into an accident and ending up permanently maimed or dead – but even that was a major selling point. Taking your life in your hands on your way to work was all part of the fun, and there was no better way to blast away that hangover than racing down to Elephant and Castle roundabout early on a frosty Winter morning.


All I had to deal with was other road users. And in the late 90s, a good five years before Ken Livingston introduced the Congestion Charge, ‘other road users’ in London traffic meant predominantly one type – the car driver.


Cars bring out the worst in people. Psychologically many people struggle to recognise they are NOT actually seated in their favourite armchair and driving around in a mechanised version of their living room, with all the levels of entitlement they feel this subsequently bestows upon them. For others, their car is an important manifestation of who they are, and any manoeuvre that shows that someone hasn’t quite noticed them – or, god forbid, briefly threatens to scratch, dent or otherwise damage their pride and joy – is seen as an actual assault on their person. Consequently, to survive commuting in London by bicycle in the late 90s you needed to ride with a very particular attitude, which I’ll summarise as follows:


1. Assume all car drivers are idiots.

This isn’t necessarily true, of course, but always expect the worse from them and you’ll be primed to deal with it when it comes. Keep your head up and watch – your subconscious picks up much more than your conscious thoughts do and will twig someone not looking before they pull out or open a door, long before your conscious mind recognises it. This is why drop handlebar ‘racer’ cycles are a bad choice for commuting. The worst bike accidents I have ever seen all involved racers.


2. Recognise bus and black cab drivers are your friends.

Don’t get me wrong; try and strike up a conversation with them and you’ll likely find out they hate cyclists in general and you in particular. Bus and black cab drivers are quick to collect war-stories about cyclists, but their jobs depend on them being aware of you – far more so than most civilian car drivers – and this is a good thing. They are a constant background presence of any urban commute, are predictable in their movements and the rest of the traffic usually follows their lead. A bus will always pull out with little notice and you can guarantee that taxi will execute a sudden u-turn across the street in front of you to get to that fare. However, if you ride with that expectation, you’ll be quite safe, and this is more than compensated for the way they break up traffic into patterns that are easy to anticipate.


3. Cycle with attitude.

Drivers who think their car is their living room sometime drive with the misapprehension that cyclists can’t afford a car and therefore lack the in-your-face aggression required to make the kind of living that they do. Try and develop a resting cycle-face that suggests, if they fuck with you, you will tear them out of their wheeled armchair and beat the living shit out of them by the side of the road. That should be enough to buy you a little space and respect – certainly more than the brand of cycle you ride.


4. Praise cycling aware driving!

This is actually VERY important: assume everyone on the road is an idiot but ACTIVELY look out for cycling-aware driving – and, when you see it, PRAISE IT! A lot of cyclists drive, and you’ll be able to spot them in the way they leave enough space between cars for you to make your way to the head of the lights, or slow to let you safely turn across traffic, or, even though you’re flagging at the top of that hill, hang back and not try to squeeze in an overtake before turning left in front of you. When you see this, hang out a thumb in gratitude. This is important because you will see so much idiocy on the road when you’re commuting by bicycle that there is a real danger you will begin to despair for humanity UNLESS you start actively looking out for YOUR PEOPLE. And, happily for both your morale and mental stamina, you’ll find them everywhere. Furthermore, getting a thumbs-up from a cyclist when you’re behind the wheel of your own car is a great feeling.


5. Recognise you’re always vulnerable and always outgunned.

This may seem a bit counterintuitive to point 3. but it really isn’t. If you collide with a car, you are the one going to hospital, not the car driver. The same is true if you call out a van full of builders or that inked and heavily built truck driver who nearly took your head off with his door. I was weight training and boxing when I was commuting but was still careful to pick my battles in London whenever I had the choice. That’s not to say I didn’t cycle with attitude and call out dangerously shit and arrogant driving as I found it, but I wasn’t stupid and knew enough about actual fighting to avoid it whenever possible. Which brings me to my final point.


6. Be quick, be sharp – and be ready to bolt.

On a bicycle you are quicker, and nimbler, and faster in traffic than most vehicles – and most pedestrians. Recognise your strengths: there’s no shame in cycling away from a confrontation. Take a sudden side street, hop on the pavement, put some street furniture between you and the lethal weapon that’s following you, then take a different route for the next week if it makes you feel safer. People cool down. Some get philosophical when the adrenalin has passed. But be aware you may cross their paths again – and if you gave them reason to pick up what happened between once more, they probably will.


These principles got me through about five years’ worth of commuting by bicycle in London at the end of the C20th. Despite this, I had a lot of scrapes, and I didn’t always follow these principles, as the episodes to come will illustrate…


commuting by bicycle, urban cycling, cycling before the congestion charge

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