Sadly, cycling in the UK is much more difficult - and dangerous - than it should be.
In the last few days, details have emerged about the death of a 77 year old woman, who fell from her bike into the path of an oncoming car because of the actions of a "nervous" pedestrian in Cambridgeshire.
Aside from the tragic death, one of the most troubling aspects of the case from the perspective of other cyclists, is that police were unable to state "categorically" whether the pavement on which the incident occurred was a shared cycleway or not. This seems to sum up the standard of cycling infrastructure in this country.
We seem to be decades behind countries like the Netherlands, where provision for cycling is widespread and well-maintained, often on dedicated paths away from both other road users and pedestrians.
In order to combat the climate emergency and encourage more people onto bikes, we need a rapid, nationwide upgrade to cycle routes - and measures to discourage the use of cars on short journeys.
Cycling is clean, healthy and incredibly efficient. Why wouldn't we want to make it as easy as possible for people to choose bikes over cars whilst getting about day-to-day?
Unfortunately, better infrastructure alone - whilst a massive help - will not remove all the issues cyclists face when UK motorists still behave like this:
But it is never too late to start making both large-scale change to our roads and investing in education programmes to shift attitudes to cyclists amongst a certain proportion of drivers who seem to demonstrate nothing but contempt for non-motorists.
After all, more and more people are waking up to the fact that electric vehicles are not the panacea they have been painted by the vehicle industry - not only is more particulate pollution being caused by tyres than exhausts now, but as previously discussed on this blog, they do nothing to relieve congestion, status anxiety or health destroying obesity and chronic inactivity (amongst other ills).
The climate emergency is already well underway - over three million Americans were displaced last year by it - and the changes we need to make must happen quickly.
Getting people onto bikes could be one of the easiest ways of dramatically reducing transport emissions in the UK - but only if we make it an enticing option for people who are currently too afraid to take to the roads on two wheels.
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