Sometimes I despair when I realise how far we still have to go to get safe cycling conditions. On the 11th of October, a man called Quentin Willson posted the following tweet on Twitter:
Great new cycle lane but where are the cyclists? pic.twitter.com/a1vhAAXxt2— Quentin Willson (@QuentinWillson) October 10, 2016
The picture is of a new Cycle Super Highway (CSH) – yes, I agree, it IS a stupid name – in London and the point Mr Willson was trying to make is that the road is congested, yet despite all the road space given over to cyclists, only a single cyclist was using it. Seems legit, doesn’t it?
Well yes, to a degree, until you realise that the CSH in question is still under construction and isn’t open yet. This is something Mr Wilson would have been painfully aware of at the time, as the closure was just behind him when he took the photo.
This is a classic example of misinformation by a motoring journalist and is downright dishonest. And yet, as Churchill said, a lie is halfway around the world before the truth even has it’s trousers on.
This is the view from roughly the same spot, but looking back:
The opening you see above is NOT to allow cyclists access to the CSH, but rather to allow pedestrians to cross.
So far it seemd a dishonest attempt to build opposition to CSH’s in London was rapidly countered by cyclists – not much of a story and quite a common occurrence.
So let’s skip to Devon and Cornwall quickly. Or rather, let’s skip to look at the response to this from Devon and Cornwall Police’s finest.
In D & C Police, armed response officers double as traffic officers. This is an important point, because naturally you’d expect such an armed response officer to be well trained not only in firearms, but also as a traffic officer.
In particular, you would expect a prominent sergeant, in charge of a section of traffic/armed response officers, to know the law and know it well.
And yet, this was the response from such a police sergeant on Twitter to Mr Willson’s tweet:
Yes indeed – a fairly senior police officer, working in a traffic police capacity tweeted that he doesn’t agree with cyclists being on the road when there’s a “cycle lane”. He failed to respond to requests to let us know where this cycle lane is and he quite clearly doesn’t understand the limitations of the vast majority of “cycle lanes”.
In case it isn’t clear, here’s the “all of the above” Sergeant Tangye agreed with:
In doing so, Sergeant Tangye added official police approval to the attitude of drivers who often deliberately intimidate cyclists who don’t use inferior cycle infrastructure. He evidently also doesn’t understand the difference between a cycle lane, a cycle track and a shared path, which is worrying, given his role in roads policing.
Policing is a profession that prides itself on an evidence-driven approach, but Sergeant Tangye was quick to publicly condemn cyclists and completely failed to do basic fact-checking in this instance.
Had he done so, he would’ve seen the CSH in the original tweet is NOT open for cyclists to use. Furthermore, he would also have learned that often cycle infrastructure is poor quality and really not fit for purpose.
Clearly Sergeant Tangye prefers to NOT have cyclists using any part of the road, given his agreement that he tweeted. This is despite cyclists being legally entitled to use practically any road (aside from motorways).
Attitudes such as what was publicly displayed by Sergeant Tangye actively emboldens the worst sort of drivers, who feel that they now have official police support for their hatred of cyclists. As such, the good sergeant has succeeded in making the roads that bit more dangerous for cyclists.
For an officer tasked with roads policing, surely that is a massive failure?
I invited Sergeant Tangye to meet up and discuss why he feels cyclists shouldn’t be on the road whenever there is a cycle track present (regardless of the quality of such a track) but he didn’t reply to my invitation.
His views are also at odds with the Highway Code (Rule 61), which specifically states: Use of these facilities is not compulsory.
It really is time for Devon and Cornwall Police to nail its colours to the mast: either the force will take roads policing seriously – especially the protection of vulnerable road users – or it won’t. Either way, it needs to be upfront and honest about it.
To date, D & C Police have always been quick to respond with “Many of our officers are cyclists” in the face of any criticism from cyclists. There’s a simple reply to that: So what?
That doesn’t automatically mean the force does all it can to help protect cyclists on the roads. It certainly doesn’t mean the force isn’t institutionally anti-cycling.
Contrast D & C Police’s approach to that of West Midlands Police, who decided to base their approach on actual research and evidence. After all, isn’t that exactly what we could reasonably expect all police forces to do?
In fact, as Sergeant Tangye’s approach clearly shows, D & C Police have a long road to walk to eradicate an anti-cycling bias from its ranks.