I cycle to work, but I’m tired of reckless cyclists ruining it for everyone

IIt’s early Monday morning and you’re walking from the station to the office. Your eyes are bleary. Your hair is a little askew. You might be carrying a flat white. You come to a crossroads. Ah, good – green man. You start walking. WHOOSH! A cyclist races past you. Misses you by inches. Blimey. There goes the coffee. The liquid burns your leg on the way down. Now you’re awake and downright furious. It’s a scene anyone who’s lived in a British city will be familiar with. Walk anywhere in central London these days and you’ll see swarms of cyclists whizzing past. Pedestrians are suffering. Something has to change.

But first, a disclaimer: I cycle to work most days, and yes, I even wear lycra shorts sometimes. However, as a reasonably responsible and normal person, I am genuinely embarrassed most mornings when I see cyclists nearly knocking over pedestrians as they speed through red lights. In the Venn diagram of cyclist types, there is often a large overlap between those who nearly knock over pedestrians and the head-to-toe lycra-clad commuters doing 40mph in a 20mph zone. These speed demons make the rest of us good guys look bad – they tarnish the cyclist brand and take away all the great things about cycling.

The main point, of course, is that it’s dangerous. The number of pedestrians hit by cyclists has increased by a third since 2020, according to police data released in May. And red light failure is particularly bad where I live. Last year, during a five-day crackdown on antisocial behaviour at Bank Junction in London’s Square Mile, 77 cyclists were fined for running red lights and nearly hitting pedestrians, cars and buses. That said, we’re not as bad as cars – road casualty statistics show that bicycles are involved in just 2 per cent of pedestrian casualties reported to and by police. The rest, 98 per cent, are hit by motor vehicles.

I’m no saint. I do occasionally ride through red lights – at about 5mph, when there are no pedestrians trying to cross and no cars in sight. Sometimes it’s actually safer for someone on a bike to ride through an intersection when the light is red, to avoid getting stuck in the path of waiting cars and motorbikes. This won’t change until the UK gets more “head start” lights, which allow cyclists to give way to traffic and hold up left-turning traffic for longer. Sure, we’ve all broken the rules at some point, whether it’s speeding or taking a public urination test. But as one passionate poster on a Reddit forum put it: “Cycling carefully through a red light when there’s no one else to give way? I don’t care. Cycling through a red light at high speed and expecting other people to slow down/stop/swerve to avoid a collision? F***k.”

Yes, the people who are being pushed aside should be furious. I know I am, when I’m on foot and it happens to me. It’s the rudest wake-up call of the morning. And pedestrians are at the bottom of the commuter food chain – think of lorries as fearsome predators, cyclists as agile foxes, and walking commuters as furry rabbits – so they should have the right to feel safe and put their trust in the green man. If they can’t, then eventually all cyclists will be seen as the scourge of society, and we can say goodbye to harmony on the roads.

There’s already a culture war going on between cyclists and motorists – what if a simmering resentment against cycling escalates into restrictions on cycling in urban areas? That would be so sad. I’m that insufferable bike nerd in the office who goes on and on about how great cycling is. There are the obvious benefits: it’s good for the environment (and therefore for non-cyclists) and it’s free. But it’s more than that. I would have moved out of London by now if I didn’t have my bike – it prevents me from dying by suffocation on the tube and getting motion sickness on jolting buses. It’s an hour of exercise built into my day on the journey there and back. It’s also the quickest way to get around the city, if you can weave through traffic and weave through parks. And it makes you aware of your surroundings: not only do I now have a good sense of direction in London, but I can also see the morning sun reflecting off Tower Bridge in the distance and hear, perhaps more often than I would like, the patter of raindrops on my helmet.

So please, for all of our sakes, the next time you approach a red light at high speed, remember to brake.