Cyclists have expressed their disappointment at the Government’s plans for more cycle lanes to be installed in Britain’s towns and cities, as it will discourage them from being irresponsible mounted menaces. They argue that the plans will prevent them from zigzagging unpredictably between lanes of slow-moving traffic, zooming along between stationary vehicles and the kerb, and forming up into convoys to wind up motorists.
‘The government needs to recognise that donning multi-coloured Lycra and a cycling helmet with little flashing lights on it makes me invincible and entitles me to act as if I own the road,’ explained Robert Keith, a keen cyclist and member of no cycling organisations whatsoever. ‘Even though I pay no road tax, unlike all other road users’, he added.
Traditionally, cyclists have always had little regard for their own safety or the safety of others. They often argue that their healthy lifestyle choice allows them to ignore traffic lights, proceed the wrong way along one-way streets and cut across pavements full of pedestrians at high speed. Relegating cyclists to separate tracks away from everyone else will curtail such customary recklessness immeasurably it is claimed.
The government are determined to press ahead with the scheme, however. They argue that more cycle lanes will increase air quality and lower noise pollution in the nation’s urban areas, most noticeably through a reduction in other road users shouting abuse at thoughtless, careless cyclists.