If you’re still hacked off with the barrage of anti smoking campaigns don’t fret, another issue will soon take its place.  If you smoke in your car though beware…

The worst thing that could happen to you, if you were riding along on your perambulator 100 years ago, is a rogue chicken may have run out in front of you and you ended up in the duck pond.  And even 50 years ago there was only one cycle-related incident reported, when a coalman’s horse trotted out in front of a tandem!  Now it’s a totally different story, but still the ever keen prat on two wheels will insist on their right to ride about on four ounces of metal with a saddle on it, rather than in one and a half tons of non-British automotive tackle.

So what’s the fuss all about?  Well, the British Tour de France winner, Bradley Wiggins was knocked off his bike by a vehicle and ended up in hospital.  Personally, at the age of 32, I think it’s about time he got a proper bloody job!  Worst still, not long after Wiggins prang, the British Cycling head coach Shane Sutton was involved in a bike crash. 

Now, one of two things will happen.  It’ll all go very, very quiet and the stories will fade into cycling history or we’ll see a small fortune spent on an on-going set of bloody boring safety campaigns, despite the fact that somewhere in the third world, thousands of men, women and children haven’t got clean water to drink!

You can see it now can’t you.  Bloody Bradley ‘the toothpick’ Wiggins will be saying something like, “You never think it’s going to happen to you,” or a badly thought out slogan like, “Think car – think bike!”  Piss off, give it up son.  It’s never going to be safe for cyclists to ride on British roads; they’re not designed for it. 

I can only assume that the ardent cyclists of today are stuck in a time warp of yesteryear, when the only other traffic on the road was another rider or the local wildlife.  Surely you need your head examined if you believe it’s safe to go up against the potholes in our roads, let alone the drain hole covers, taxis, buses, lorries, idiots on motor cycles and pedestrians who are too drunk to walk straight.

“Think car – think bike!”  What a bunch of crap.  If drivers can’t see a motor bike, what chance do they stand of seeing a stick insect on a vehicle that’s three times the width smaller?  “Come on Jocasta; let’s take the kids on the suicide run to school!”  “Won’t it be dangerous darling?”  “No, no, no, no.  We have our Day-Glo coloured helmets, which make us look like helmets, making us readily visible and don’t for get the all important arm and knee pads!  Fuck it, let’s talk the dog!”  Yeah, section the lot of ‘em I say…

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2012 at 4:00 am and is filed under Neils Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.