Is retaliation right when cyclists are abused on our bikes?

This was of great surprise to me and also to two men who were walking along happily in the expectation of their route continuing unmolested.

It’s wild but it keeps you on your toes.

One of the best cycle lanes in the city is the South City Way. It’s great, but it does have its flaws. One issue – and this isn’t a flaw of the route itself – is that people treat it like a car park. In the great hierarchy of the road, people driving would not countenance blocking the road for vehicles but they have no compunction about blocking cycle paths.

On this day, a small non-council bin lorry had parked with two wheels on the road and two wheels in the cycle route. This wouldn’t have been too great an issue but the refuse collector had left the passenger door of the truck open so the route was entirely blocked. He was wheeling glass bins across the pavement to empty into the vehicle.

Politely, I called along to ask him if he might shut the door so I could cycle past. He spun on his heel and shouted no, he would not shut the door. I was at the truck by now so I said, no problem, I’ll just close it over myself.

Whooft. Chap was not happy. He darted across the pavement shouting, “Don’t touch my property” and grabbed the door, opening it again. I was blocked at the front by the door and had the guy pressed up against my back, close enough that he was standing on my foot.

He kept telling me never to touch his property and I asked him to step back as I was finding his behaviour threatening. This pushed some button that sent him into a further fury. A couple walking past stopped to ask if I needed help, which made matters worse as my new friend and the passerby ending up challenging each other to fists.

Turning his attention back to me, the bike lane blocker went through a series of allegations. I was middle class and privileged and he knew exactly what my type are like, as he’d “grown up around people like you”.

This segued into a surrealist rant about how people like me are the cause of alt-right conspiracy theories but we are so mired in our own entitlement “you don’t even realise it”. I suspect he meant incel culture – a subculture of misogynistic men – because at this point he said something about feminists and started telling me I was ugly.

He worked up to his final point. “I know what you’re all like,” he said, “Middle class, privileged, entitled, think you can go wherever you want, CYCLISTS”.

I’d started off feeling concerned and uncomfortable but by now I was merely fascinated. This guy really had a bee in his bonnet about folk on bikes and he could not contain it.

A few days later I was walking out of the gym with a woman, who was also carrying a bike helmet, and, as is the collegiate spirit of cyclists, I told her about the bin man.

She had her own hair-raising stories and shared them with me in return. That’s the other thing about people who cycle – it doesn’t matter who you ask, they’ll have a story about someone getting really agitated at them on the road.

I chaired Cycling Scotland’s annual conference earlier this month and the issue of abuse on the roads, unsurprisingly, came up.

Cycling is such a simple thing. You just put your feet on the pedals and off you go. But this simple, simple thing is made unendingly difficult by the complex attitudes of other road users to people cycling.

It’s not only drivers. The day before doorgate I had a pedestrian shout at me repeatedly that I was a “f*****g idiot”. He kept pointing at me and then prodding his temple, just to press home the point. I have absolutely no idea what I’d done – I was in a cycle lane and moved off when the bike-shaped traffic light turned green.

Maybe he didn’t realise it was a shared-use crossing. No idea.

It’s undeniable that some cycling take an avant-garde attitude to the rules of the road. They jump red lights, they go on the pavements, they close pass walkers.

Food couriers have become a scourge on these chunky e-bikes, more akin to mini motorbikes, on pavements and in bike lanes.

Readily acknowledging all of that, what do we do, as individuals, when we’re verbally or physically abused on the roads.

It’s always so difficult in the moment. If you shout back – or even talk back – then you risk escalating the situation or ending up looking like the bad guy. If you say nothing then the person thinks they can abuse other people without consequence and their incorrect views, like the “f*****g idiot” guy, aren’t being corrected.

An unscientific straw poll shows that, while everyone I know who cycles has met with abuse on the roads, only one person reported it to the police.

An acquaintance was knocked off her bike by a guy who became frustrated with her taking too long on a hill and she didn’t even report that as she felt it was pointless. There were no witnesses and she was, fortunately, physically unharmed.

There’s a good Twitter account run by a man who takes it upon himself to challenge people who post anti-cyclist rhetoric. He’ll even contact employers to tell them what their staff are up to online.

That’s a real-life option too, to report every one of these incidents where possible. The bin lorry had absolutely no branding on it but I could still track it down. You don’t want to get people into trouble but you similarly don’t want people yelling abuse in the street unfettered.

It’s an additional job of work for cyclists, the admin of reporting, but there’s a great British attitude change towards cycling that needs to take place and challenging those who make an easy thing hard forms a significant part of that.

Read more by Catriona Stewart:

The Glasgow Clan scandal shows signs of progress in dealing with odious male behaviour

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