My article on the whole Scott Lomas Road Rage Saga as printed in the CTC Magazine is now available here.
I add only the comment that I feel that the reason that it is hard sometimes to resist getting into a counterproductive row with motorists who endanger us when we are on our bikes is that we know that formal come back of the sort that ought to occur either will not happen or will happen at greater cost to us than to the miscreant.
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As any cyclist will appreciate, motor-vehicles turn many apparently normal people into bullies, and such enormous power greatly facilitate bullies to bully, terrorise and threaten vulnerable road users.
ReplyDeleteI find that even women and very wimpish men sometimes cannot resist the temptation to bully me on my bicycle, for no better reason that they can. Something that I feel certain that they would never consider, let alone try, if they were on an equal footing. I am sure that I am not alone in this view.
Quite simply, the effect of motor-vehicle use is one that does not civilise, in-fact the opposite is true. It turns some into super-human sociopathic monsters.
When and only when more people like MPs, the Police, the CPS and members of the Juduciary cycle and cycling has become normalised, and the bullies are severely punished for their anti-social and probably sociopathic behaviour then we will be able to call ours society civilised.
I've just read your article in CTC's magazine, and wanted to say thanks.
ReplyDeleteAs a cyclist, I often despair that the number of motorists who threaten (or worse) us on a daily basis, and that there's no legal comeback.
I've been hit and run twice in recent years, once with follow-up assault. Police didn't want to know (and indeed threatened to charge me with breaching the public order for having the nerve to shout back as I was being shoved around).
I'm now at least vaguely hopeful that things are set to change.