10 reasons to love cyclists

I don’t know why but apparently, there are some people who hate cyclists . I can’t understand. As a motorist I find many excellent reasons to love cyclists. Here are a few, I’m sure you can add a few more.

1. Target Practise – A cyclist helps develops our advanced motoring skills. For example, how close can you get to a cyclist without knocking them off? This is quite an art – best practised in a white van whilst travelling 15mph above the speed limit and with mobile phone in your right hand. You have to be careful though because occasionally, cyclists may make ‘dangerous manoeuvres’ like move 10 cm to the right to avoid a pothole in the road. If they have the audacity to move more than 1 foot from the edge of the road see no.2.

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2. Practise Your Musical Rhythms
. If you see a cyclist in the road, this is an excellent reason to practise sounding your horn. You can practise the art of playing your horn very loudly or you could just practise a simple rhythm like repeatedly holding the horn down. Unfortunately, this can often lead to disappointment as for some reason, beeping a horn is insufficient to make a cyclist disappear from OUR roads.

3. Feeling of Superiority. Now, some cyclists can having that annoying air of self-righteous superiority. They think they are saving the planet by eating home grown leeks and cycling to work. But, whilst we can tolerate their imaginary fantasies, we actually know it is us motorists who are saving the environment because of our decision to use unleaded petrol and occasionally buying 40% recycled plastic in our car air fresheners.

4. Funny To Splash People. This is related to no.1 but actually more fun. With driving over a puddle we get to see more physical evidence of our driving skills. When the road is waterlogged if you drive really fast over a puddle, a big stream of water gets sprayed over other road users and pedestrians. Just watch the face of a cyclist after he gets soaked with your puddle – priceless!

5. Odds Are in Our Favour. Crashes are inevitable on our roads, well at least they are inevitable if we don’t pay attention whilst driving and try to send a text or fall asleep at the wheel. In fact vehicles on British roads kill over 3,000 people a year, but, when you do crash into a cyclist, the odds are heavily in your favour. Their lycra shorts may make a dint in our paintwork, but, this can usually be fixed. Just image if cyclists drove Sherman tanks – when we knocked them down we would have more than a bit of dinted paintwork to deal with! Now that wouldn’t at all be fair – so we should be grateful to cyclists for not threatening our reinforced steel SUVs with nothing more than a thin layer of slightly ridiculous lycra.

6. Humour. Driving is a pretty boring affair. I mean we get stuck in endless traffic jams and it can take one hour to travel just a few miles in Central London. Now it’s pretty annoying that cyclists don’t get so caught up in the traffic congestion – often sneaking up on the inside in these ridiculous cycle lanes. But, next time your stuck in a traffic jam feeling miserable that other people won’t leave their car at home, why not pass the time laughing at other road users. Cyclists are bound to be wearing some ridiculous clothing, or maybe they’re just getting wet. Look on the funny side of these absurd cyclists and suddenly those interminable traffic jams will fly by!

7. Cyclists don’t Wear Down the Road.

No one like potholes, (unless you have one of those 4*4s and like to show off your off-road skills). But, cyclists don’t wear down the road because their bikes weigh very little. Nevertheless, even though cyclists don’t create negative externalities, we can still complain cyclists don’t pay road tax (the fact it was abolished in 1937 doesn’t really matter, having a go at cyclists is usually a pretty easy way to get a contract with a major newspaper, even if you are just a half baked TV chef…)

8. Cyclists don’t Pollute the Environment.

No one likes the exhaust fumes created by cars. It is unpleasant and can cause health problems like asthma, not to mention the problems of global warming. But cyclists don’t create any pollution, at least if you don’t count the by product of all those organic baked beans, these hippie, sandal-wearing cyclists often eat.

9. Cyclists don’t take up Valuable Parking Space
space
(space taken by cars and bikes)

Try parking in Central London, – a nightmare. You can spend hours driving around looking for a spot. Just imagine if every bike took the space of a car. We would never be able to park!

10. Cyclists don’t Cause Congestion.

Congestion would be even worse if cyclists started driving. Every cyclist means quicker journey times for us.

Next week – 10 Reasons to Love Motorists

 

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