I spent a part of my childhood living in the
Highlands. Many of the roads were much worse then. I learned as a passenger
from the back seat how to use passing places. One of the key lessons was to
allow overtaking. The other was not to be selfish. If all road users learned
these lessons wherever they are we would all be safer and calmer.
I believe in being courteous on the road and thinking
about the needs and safety of everyone we meet. If I see someone trying to get
out of a side road my tendency is to stop and let them if it is at all possible
to do so. This isn’t because I am being particularly virtuous. I think driving is
safer for me if I am courteous to other road users.
I learned while at university that riding a bike was
particularly dangerous. In Cambridge everyone rides a bike and students see it
as an essential part of the experience. But Cambridge is a particularly
dangerous place to cycle with narrow roads and ditches full of water at the
side of many roads. I used to warn new students to get to know the place before
riding a bike, but they usually ignored the advice. Deaths were quite common.
Many car accidents are survivable, but cyclists and
motorcyclists will frequently be killed while the driver of the car or lorry
that hits them survives. It is right therefore that car and lorry drivers
should be particularly aware of the safety needs of pedestrians, horses, bikes
and motorbikes. We will probably survive a collision, they most likely will not.
Every road user has an equal right to be there, but we
all need to be realistic about our behaviour and we all need to think about
each other’s needs. A balance is needed and I’m afraid some users are getting
the balance wrong.
Thirty years ago, bicycles were almost exclusively
used for short journeys. People would ride to work or sometimes a few miles
into the countryside. As a child I never saw cyclists in the Highlands making
long journeys. The roads were unsuitable and the mountains too large. But since
then, the number of cyclists has increased massively.
This hobby does not appeal to me, but obviously people
have a perfect right to enjoy the countryside as they please. But what they do
not have the right to do I believe is to deliberately obstruct other road users.
Driving round Scotland, I find that the vast majority
of cyclists are courteous and thoughtful about other users. The Highway code
says that they have the right to ride in groups or to ride in the middle of the
road or to ride two abreast, but most cyclists will adjust how they are riding
if they see that a car wants to overtake.
Most cars too are patient. No one sensible wants to
get into a dispute with another road user. I have not witnessed cars beeping
their horns or drivers shouting even when people riding two abreast fail to let
people pass.
But there is clearly a contradiction in the advice
given by the police on single track roads to allow overtaking and the view of
many cyclists that they are perfectly within their rights on narrow roads to
ride in such a way that it is impossible for others to overtake for as long as
they please.
A while ago I tweeted about this and received a
response from a police force questioning my driving ability and whether I ought
to have a licence. But a free society allows people to question the laws and
rules that govern the use of roads. It is perfectly justified to for instance
think that the speed limit ought to be eighty miles an hour while obeying the
actual one. It is equally permissible to question the rule that cyclists ought
to be allowed to ride two abreast whenever they see fit. Of course, I have to
follow rules and obey laws I disagree with, but it is the mark of a
totalitarian society that does not even allow me to doubt the wisdom of these
laws.
But this is the mark of modern policing. It has become
authoritarian about issues such as homosexuality, transgender and lockdown
rules, so that it requires not merely that people obey the law, but that they
agree with it. While obeying the law it ought to be possible for me to think
that homosexuality is sinful and that it is impossible for a man to become a
woman. But this is no longer the case on a range of issues. It is now necessary
to remain silent lest the police object to my thoughts and find them hateful. But
there is a phrase for such a police force. It is “thought police”.
I think that allowing cyclists to ride in groups or
two abreast is dangerous not merely for other vehicles, but for the cyclists
themselves. The reason that the police demand that users of single-track roads
allow overtaking is not merely that failing to do so will be frustrating for other
users, but that it will cause accidents. If you hold up the local fisherman who
needs to catch the tide long enough, he will take the first opportunity that
presents itself to overtake you even if the road is only just wide enough and
he can only just see far enough ahead. Of course, he should wait patiently as
his chance to get his boat out fades. So too we should all wait patiently as we
miss appointments or are late for work because Extinction Rebellion has blocked
the road or cyclists are riding two abreast, but it is human nature to be
impatient.
It is rarely a problem passing cyclists in a car,
unless they deliberately set out to obstruct and this unfortunately is
happening more and more frequently. Suddenly on a main road the traffic slows
to a crawl. What has happened? The traffic jam stretches back hundreds of yards.
Instead of going seventy everyone is going ten miles an hour. We edge forward,
wondering what can be holding us up. Eventually it becomes clear. Two cyclists
riding two abreast have caused the jam. No one beeps at them. No one remonstrates.
Everyone waits on this rather twisty road for a place where it is safe to pass.
If the cyclists had just moved to single file, it would have been easy to pass
them, but because they take up nearly the whole of one lane it is difficult. But
why should the rule for single track roads not apply on a fairly narrow two-lane
road?
The problem with the Highway Code rule about riding
two abreast is that certain cyclists view it as allowing them to ride two
abreast whenever they please and no matter how many other road users they obstruct.
It is as if they see it as their purpose to obstruct.
As the law stands two cyclists have a perfect right to
behave in this way, but there is also a moral law. They are being selfish. We know that drivers sometimes overtake when
it is unsafe to do so. They do this because they are frustrated. Sometimes when
they do this, they have an accident and sometimes someone gets killed. Everyone
ought to wait patiently behind the two cyclists even if their riding two
abreast means that no one can overtake ever. This is the police advice in this
situation. But we all know that eventually a car driver will take a chance.
So, what do I do when I come across two cyclists
riding two abreast in such a way that it prevents me overtaking?
1 I beep at them risking a confrontation.
2 I wait patiently until a sufficiently empty stretch
of road is visible even if that means waiting an hour.
3 I overtake when I think it’s probably safe to do so,
but I’m not 100% sure.
In this situation drivers frankly have to take a
chance or else the traffic jam will stretch all the way from Inverness to Wick.
Suddenly you see a stretch of road ahead. It looks just about long enough. You
make it and breathe a sigh of relief. But one day you won’t make it, or else
someone else in the traffic jam will discover a diminishing stretch of road
with car speeding towards them from just round the corner.
No doubt the two cyclists will feel virtuous as they
pass two abreast the mangled wrecks. We
didn’t do anything wrong. It was safer for us to ride two abreast because it
made us more visible. We had no obligation to move to single file, because we
can ride two abreast whenever we judge that it is safer for us to do so and we
judge it to be safer always. The police will agree with the virtuous cyclists
and tut-tut at the folly of car drivers.
Pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists horses and herds
of cattle should be able to use the roads as safely as cars and lorries, but if
I suddenly found that my car was going ten miles an hour due to an engine fault
and I saw that others wanted to pass I would pull into the first layby I saw
out of politeness and out of concern for the safety of other road users and
also because I was brought up on roads where there is an obligation to allow
overtaking.
Most cyclists get this, but some I’m afraid set out deliberately
to obstruct as many wicked cars as they possibly can.
