Keith: They’re so aggressive, aren’t they? They bang your bonnet, bang your wing mirror and then they cycle off, they won’t stay around to argue. That’s what really pisses me off.
BB: Do you think all cyclists are the same?
Keith: Yeah. You can generalise with cyclists.
BB: So you don’t discriminate between people who are cycling for work, couriers, and other cyclists?
Keith: They’re all the same.
Les: You do meet the odd one with the lights on and the yellow stuff all over and the backpacks and everything, and they generally stick to the rules. But the ones who are riding around with next to nothing on, just a bit of Lycra, zooming about delivering stuff, they will take the mickey, no doubt about it. I don’t go out of my way to get in their way, but I just find it’s hard to avoid them sometimes.
BB: They’re just doing a job, same as you.
Les: I understand that, but if they come up the side as they do, if you look at any of our cabs, there’ll be little scrape marks along the paintwork. Now, if I go in the garage for that, they’ll go, £50 mate. I’m not going to get that back off them, never in a million years. And that happens every day.
Paul (didn’t give his driver number): You know what it all boils down to? There’s no punishment. They don’t think the law applies to them.
Steve (over at table in corner): There’s a place where all the paramedics go, the guys who deal with all the bad accidents and things, and their entertainment when they’re sitting waiting for a call is watching the traffic lights to see how many cyclists stop. They say they actually take a tally. Nine out of ten don’t bother.
Les: I don’t understand why they’ve always got to push to the front.
BB: Because if you don’t, you’re invisible and you’re stuck behind some trucker’s exhaust.
Les: Yes, but I still don’t think, well, I’ve got to commit suicide, push myself in front of a lorry, just because I’m breathing a bit of crap. I’d sit a few yards back.
Keith: There should be some sort of registration for them.
I know it’s difficult and it should be free at first, but they should be registered. Because every cyclist, that’s one less car on the road, and that’s great. But you still can’t have them all banging and breaking things.
Mickey: If they knock off your wing mirror, scratch the side of the cab, smash your back light, there’s nothing you can do. There’s no comeback. They just ride off. There’s no way of recognising them again. The old cabs used to have a diesel cap on the back. Many times, they just hold onto that and get dragged along by a cab rather than cycle.
Les (reflectively): There’s a lot of anger, isn’t there? A lot of anger coming out of people. See, most cab drivers know we’re not going to get anywhere quickly. So we don’t drive fast. We know – I’ve had twenty-nine years’ experience of knowing I’m not going to get anywhere. We’ll get there eventually, but there’s no point in rushing.
BB: But the point is, you can get somewhere quick on a bike.
Keith: See, that’s the trouble. That’s their mindset – I can get past that, I can go faster, I can get across town. But they’ve still got to realise they’ve got to stop at a red light.
BB: If every cyclist suddenly stopped at every red light, would you start respecting them?
Les: Well, I don’t know …
Keith: Get ’em off the roads. Cycle lanes, whatever, just get ’em off the roads.
Les: License them.
Mickey: Round ’em all up and nuke ’em! (general hilarity).
Paul (looking out of the window at a couple of cyclists coming across the junction towards the café): Hang on, watch that – watch that! He’s coming up to the red and … (the cyclist stops). Well, he’s done it safely, but nine times out of ten they don’t. Look! Look! Guy’s just gone straight through. He’s gone through a red light. Look! He’s overtaking! BB: He’s allowed to overtake!
Keith: Yes, and he’s wearing a dirty jumper. And that ain’t right (gales of laughter). We don’t like cyclists, do we? We hate ’em.
Mickey: Last summer, June or July it was, there was a naked cycle ride. I was amazed, I was sitting there and there must have been a thousand of them.
BB: So if all cyclists cycled naked, would it make you like them better?
Keith: Yes. Definitely. They shouldn’t be allowed to cycle unless they’re naked.
After an hour or so I put away my Dictaphone and get up.
Keith: There you go, then. Sorry about that. Tell you what, though, we hate bus drivers more. Bendy buses. Oh, we really dislike them. So you’re not top of the list. And motorbikes. They’re third.
In fact, this turns out not to be a comprehensive list. The next time I took a cab, I asked the driver what he thought of other road users. In addition to cyclists, motorbikes and bus drivers, he added Post Office vans, dustbin lorries and anyone driving a Mercedes.
On a cold clear day in mid-November, Patrick Field is spreading the gospel at Speakers’ Corner. Field is in his late fifties, bundled up in a couple of well-worn jackets and a fleece hat – no helmet, no hi-vis, and what looks like a home-built bike with a plain blue lugged frame, drop bars and CDs slotted between the spokes. The only obvious concessions to safety are a very powerful front light and his red jacket. Clearly, here is a man who knows his stuff. Field has been cycling and thinking about cycling for a very long time. In addition to running the London School of Cycling, he’s known as something of a two-wheel guru, writing articles, appearing at conferences and teaching the rules of good behaviour to everyone from complete beginners to experienced racers. He knows the city very well, and he has a lot of strong opinions about it. The feelings are obviously reciprocated. At some stage London has imprinted itself on him so completely that, if you look carefully, you can probably find the route from Kingston to Stratford mapped through the lines on his face.
Anyway, for today the plan is to find out about how to cycle. Not how to cycle with government approval, or how to cycle by trial and error, but how to cycle realistically. After Field has given my bike a quick check, we set off along Upper Brook Street to practise positioning. Field echoes Alison Parker: what, he asks, is the most common type of accident for cyclists? Parked cars – hitting the open door of a parked vehicle. To avoid doing so, ‘Your default position should be the middle of the leftmost lane of traffic.’ The important thing is to take a nice smooth line. If you know you’re just about to have to swing out back into the road to avoid a line of parked cars, the best thing is not to tuck yourself too far into the kerb to start with, to look behind you to see what’s coming and to make it plain either by indicating or by your trajectory what your intentions are. But here we run into another familiar issue – the way men and women behave on bikes. ‘Girls tend towards, “I’m not really here, don’t worry about me, I don’t want to be a nuisance.” That’s dreadfully dangerous because these drivers have all got busy lives and they’re distracted and they haven’t had enough rest, and if you’re doing your, “Oh, don’t worry about me” act, then you can’t be surprised if they don’t notice you at all. The other side of the coin is what we can call the male problem, and that’s, “Well, fuck you, I’m going to ride my bike.” It’s like making an enemy out of everyone else on the road. And I think that’s quite English, in a way – no one’s ever told these poor boys that they can be powerful without being furious. No one’s ever encouraged them to be a powerful friendly cheerful adult – “Yes, I do own the road, let’s share it.”’
The best thing to do is to learn to take what’s yours – the full six feet, the car-sized space on the road. You cycle