From time to time I get e-mails from PR people asking me to write something on this blog. Recently the same e-mail from a PR person (working on behalf of a firm of insurance brokers) has arrived in my in-box from several different directions, evidently several people felt that I might like to write something about it. So what were the contents of this e-mail? Just in case you are interested, here it is:

Hi,

With the relationship between motorists and cyclists often being reported as at boiling point, Policy Expert [a firm of insurance brokers] has just published the results of a survey into differing attitudes between the two – with some surprising results.

Cyclists fared well in the survey overall, with 15% of motorists saying they wished there were more cyclists on the roads, and a further 30% considering them completely harmless.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the survey also found that 35% of cyclists believe they should have insurance to be allowed to cycle on the road, and a third of cyclists would drink and bike, with 31% saying they would cycle after having two or more pints of beer or large glasses of wine.

These, and the rest of the findings are available here: [Link to insurance brokers website]

If you’d like to see the full survey results I’d be happy to send those across to you.

Thanks, let me know what you think.

So what do I think about it? Now, where do I start? Maybe with “the relationship between motorists and cyclists often being reported as at boiling point”. Is this really true? In the real world: No. The media like to play up idea of a “war” on Britain’s roads, but no such war exists. There is however there is a problem with a culture of bullying among a few reckless motorists, and the promotion of a casual disregard for the lives of others by the motor industry and its marketing agents.

Before going further, maybe I should make it clear that there are not two different species, one called “cyclists” and one called “motorists”. There are just people using the roads, everyone has a right to mobility, but there is no right to drive. As I have pointed out on this blog before, the operating of heavy and potentially dangerous machinery in a public place is an activity which is only permitted under licence, and with that licence come responsibilities, something I will come back to later.

Having visited the Policy Expert website and looked at the blog post “Motorists vs cyclists – The Results!”, I wasn’t clear on what exactly the point of this survey of their customers was, I can only assume that is was to find a way to draw attention to their insurance brokering service by suggesting that people need to buy more insurance.

You will notice that I am not linking to the site. This is because I have no desire to give them free advertising or increase their search engine optimisation (if you want to find it, there is enough information provided above to search for it). But having been invited to give my thoughts on the survey, I intend to do so.

According to the PR person: “Cyclists fared well in the survey overall, with 15% of motorists saying they wished there were more cyclists on the roads, and a further 30% considering them completely harmless”. What is that supposed to mean? Let’s just look at a few facts here, on average 3,000 people are killed by badly driven motor vehicles on UK roads every year, whereas fewer than two are killed by recklessly ridden bicycles in an average year (and that’s two too many in my opinion). The simple truth is that cyclists do very little harm to others but motorists have the potential to do a great deal of harm to others (both directly and indirectly). It is the potential to do harm to others that caused Parliament to pass the Motor Car Act 1903, which introduced “the crime of reckless driving”, and imposed penalties. It also introduced the mandatory vehicle registration of all motorcars, and made it compulsory for drivers of motorcars to have a Driving Licence (although the driving test was not made compulsory until 1934). This Act was replaced by the Road Traffic Act of 1930, which in turn also introduced the driving offences – dangerous, reckless and careless driving and driving whilst being unfit and under the influence of drink or drugs (although it wasn’t until 1967 that an alcohol limit was set and testing brought in). The Act also brought in a requirement for compulsory third-party insurance for all motor vehicles driven on the public highway. The reason for these changes? The level of harm done to others by the drivers of motor vehicles. The first death caused by a motor vehicle in the UK occurred in 1896, but it wasn’t until 1926 that detailed records began to be collected (in that year there were 4,886 fatalities, bear in mind that there would only have been a handful of cars on the roads in 1926, compared with today).

However, the PR person tells me that “the survey also found that 35% of cyclists believe they should have insurance to be allowed to cycle on the road”. This is rather curious, why should cyclists be required to have insurance to be allowed to cycle on the road? As I have just pointed out, cyclists do very little harm to others, even the results of this survey suggests that they are “completely harmless”, so why would they need insurance to be on the roads? Well the PR person suggests that this is might be because “31% [of cyclists] saying they would cycle after having two or more pints of beer or large glasses of wine”. Um, so what? Would anyone suggest that people going to the pub and then walking home should have 3rd party insurance? Of course not.

Other findings on the “Motorists vs cyclists – The Results!” site include the admission by 16% of motorists surveyed that cyclists keep traffic levels down. This is at least a small positive, but then it goes on to talk about “road tax”, blithely ignoring the simple fact that Road Tax was abolished in 1936, and that Vehicle Excise Duty is a tax on pollution not on road use. The fact that they bring up this spurious rubbish shows two things, one: motorists have a dangerous and unwarranted sense of ownership of the roads (even when the Road Fund was in existence, 1920 -1936, the majority of the cost of road building and improvement came from general and local taxation) and two: that the people who carried out the survey haven’t bothered to do a bit of basic homework before carrying out the survey, so how can they call themselves “Experts”?