Thursday 20 December 2012

Legitimacy to talk shop

In the absence of an apparent solution, one of society's coping mechanisms is to freely provide advice to cyclists (a minority outgroup, apparently) - although I am still not entirely sure how any of these pieces of advice are relevant to my using a bike.
 

Here's a selection of pedal panacea the public advises you on.
"Wear hiviz" and "no helmet?" are the rather more 'useful' comments that are thrown at me. And I hear it a lot from my fellow cyclists too. Cyclists just can't even help themselves. Bless, it must be hard to conform to minority outgroup rules, so they get easily over-ridden by wider societal views.
Then there are the "pay road tax" and "get off the road" comments [insert any number of expletives at your own choosing] which are tending more towards the bottom end of the acceptance scale of my fragile soul. These comments also beg the question which part of the motorist's brain has been affected by toxic fumes, transport anxieties or general feeling of inferiority or pseudo-megalomania.
In any case, society likes to put the onus on you. Society wants you to change so that nothing or no-one else has to act.

Yet I am doing nowt wrong. In fact: meanwhile in the windy narrow hallways of the Df(mm)T, policy continues unabashedly to encourage everyone to cycle and promote cycling as a healthy, good, green, cost-effective, safe thing to do.

Using a bicycle, I am doing as I am told.
 
Here's my message to the non-cycling public.

Get hold of a bike and cycle on the road for two miles or so. It will certainly bestow legitimacy on you to talk shop proper. Call me. Here' my number 07828 60 4349.

And OMFG we are doing it to our children too. Why not campaign for safer streets rather than putting up with this #driverless victim-blaming slopey-shouldered dross?

The girl who didn't dress bright




The boy who didn't stop look and listen




The boy who didn't look for a safe place to cross

1 comment:

  1. How's about a few more, like this:

    The woman who reached down into the footwell beside her for her handbag

    The man who left his specs at home

    The man who had the sun in his eyes

    The woman who only cleaned a teensy bit of her windscreen of frost

    Every one a cause of a road death to a pedestrian or cyclist (the first one being a teacher at my primary school - the kid she mowed down was on the pavament she mounted)

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