I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE

I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE

Years ago (back in the early 80s) there used to be a bike racing team sponsored by DAF trucks; the great Roger de Vlaeminck rode for them in the latter stages of his career. I thought it an incongruous sponsorship at the time, because unlike Renault (who owned Gitane bikes) and Peugeot (who had always made bikes) there seemed no connection to the world of cycling, and indeed, some inherent conflict of interest. I was reminded of them the other day as I drove through Notting Hill (where I would normally be cycling) with a DAF truck filling my rear-view mirror. Now, of course, in London we are sharply aware of the mismatch between bikes and trucks.

Acute Irony

One of the ironies of being a cyclist in London is seeing the tipper trucks advertising Cycle Training UK, which is an organisation delivering safety training around cycling. The irony is that the lorries concerned belong to G.F.Gordon Plant Hire, who, working for CrossRail, have been involved in more cycling fatalities than any other operator. This feels like a very egregious case of victim-blaming. I know Gordons have some “tips for drivers” stickers on their lorries, as well as “tips for cyclists”, and are sending their drivers on courses with Cycle Training UK, but it does feel a bit odd to be lectured from the side of a lorry as it threatens you. The message seems to be that if only cyclists behaved better then they would be safe.

Acute Injury

The fact is, though, that while some London cyclists have died recently after making unwise manoeuvres, others have simply been mown down by lorries while cycling perfectly normally. Gordons are, I am sure, one of the better operators, and are perfectly sincere about this, but others in their industry seem less keen to face up to their responsibilities. It is scandalous that drivers with driving convictions are employed to drive HGVs, but it seems to be regarded as unreasonable to point this out. Drivers still omit to signal when turning left (or have non-functioning indicators), and I’m afraid I had an example of that just here the other day, from a Gordons truck! Too often drivers will sit in a queue at lights and only turn on their indicator when the lights change, which is not much help to the cyclist on the inside of a vehicle she thought was going straight on. Yes, perhaps we shouldn’t creep up through lines of stationary traffic, but drivers get very vexed if we occupy a car’s-worth of road space and then don’t instantly move out of their way. And sometimes, to be honest, cyclists are trying to get to the cycle refuge in front of the queue, which is meant to be safe.

Why Exactly?

The point which the haulage industry doesn’t seem to want to address is that the design of European trucks is simply unsafe, for pedestrians as well as cyclists. It would be interesting to learn why exactly our trucks are designed with such poor visibility, because it surely doesn’t have to be that way. How is it, for instance, that American trucks have quite differently-designed cabs from ours?

Sympathy for the (old) devil

Extraordinary sight the other day: a large plain, blue lorry, bearing the name “Ronnie Wood Ltd”. It turned out to be delivering new chiller cabinets to Waitrose in Bayswater (which is being rebuilt). Ronnie Wood, I thought? Chiller cabinets seem a very prosaic trade for a Rolling Stone to get into, a long way from rhythm guitar. Perhaps he’s fallen on hard times? Should we organise a whip-round? Somehow I imagine not.