I watched the Panorama episode entitled 'Road Rage: Cars v Bikes', yesterday (broadcast on 2nd November). It is available on BBC iPlayer for another 11 months.
Setting aside the unhelpful, antagonistic and tabloidy programme name, there were things about the episode that were interesting and good for the mainstream media to draw attention to. Richard Bilton, the presenter, is a cyclist himself and included the views of Cycling UK and even the bereaved families of two cyclists killed in the same incident not far from here, in Buckinghamshire.
However, the format was deliberately adversarial and in the usual BBC drive for impartiality - thus pleasing no one - the voices of everyone's favourite road user, White Van Person, were prominent, as were those of portly wife-beater and journalist, Rod Liddle (whose presence can only have promoted the health benefits of the regular cycling he was busy denigrating).
Liddle made his habitual arguments about the need for cyclists to be licensed and registered, whilst completely ignoring the fact that cyclists and motorists are largely the same group of people.
Journalist Peter Walker has also been critical of the show's use of statistics, the provenance of which is far from clear.
Ultimately, however, the programme does a good job of showing how lacking the UK is in proper, safe cycling infrastructure and how far we lag behind the rest of Europe in encouraging people to leave their cars at home for certain journeys.
This tweet, for example, uses footage from the programme alongside reportage from the Netherlands, which is a stark comparison:
This issue needs to be talked about, even in an imperfect format.
As the Met Office have tweeted in the last 24 hours, the science behind climate change is clear and more people need to do more to reduce emissions:
And cycling can even be good for business, according to Cycling UK:
That only sounds like good news to me as the UK teeters on the brink of recession.
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