“I’m impartial on everything – except my own safety”: Jeremy Vine on his cycling “radicalisation”, Twitter trolls, the “gaslighting of cyclists”, and why bad streets and bad drivers cause road danger

It may come as a surprise to anyone who has owned a Twitter (or X) account over the past decade, and witnessed his dramatic, jazzily edited encounters with London’s vast array of careless, distracted, and often dangerous drivers, but Jeremy Vine was once, as he puts it, “car-brained”.

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The BBC Radio 2 presenter, and host of his own eponymous Channel 5 current affairs show, is perhaps best known in cycling circles for his forthright opinions on road safety in the capital, along with the videos he captures on his helmet camera and posts to social media of his cycling commute through London.

These clips, showcasing everything from dangerously close passes to terribly designed cycling infrastructure (along with some funky music and editing, and the occasional penny farthing ride), have ensured that Vine has become a staple of road.cc’s news and live blog coverage over the years.

However, that active presence on the somewhat less than hospitable debating forum that was Twitter has also meant that the 59-year-old broadcaster has attracted more than his fair share of ridicule and hate from pro-motoring, anti-cycling corners of the internet.

Jeremy Vine and cab driver (credit: @theJeremyVine on Twitter/X)

But Vine’s status as a cycling social media spokesperson and lightning rod wasn’t always on the cards. In fact, as he tells the 100th episode of the road.cc Podcast, his conversion to cycling was a late – albeit dramatic – one.

“I was in my 40s, and I remember having a really big argument about cycling with my then-editor, who was a massively keen cyclist, and he was telling me why he cycled through his local park, even though there was a sign saying ‘no cyclists’. And I thought that was appalling, because I had no concept that cyclists were human,” he tells the podcast.

“I was in the classic thing of thinking they just got in the way. I didn’t have the logical step, which says that actually, if all those cyclists get into 4x4s, we won’t be able to move around at all. So, I was being a little bit shirty with my editor, in a classic car-brained way.

“And then in my 40s, I got miserable. I got sad and fat. And then basically, I thought I should just embed some exercise in my daily life – and the only place I could find the space was the commute, so I thought I’m going to try and do it on a bicycle.

“And it wasn’t a gradual thing. It was like a conversion. Suddenly I started looking like Taylor Swift. I felt better. And the thing that then radicalised me was that I began to realise there was no reason on earth why it should be unsafe, and I really resented the unpredictability of it.”

Jeremy Vine, Penny Farthing world record attempt (credit: road.cc)

He continues: “And it came home to me soon after I started cycling – there was a little hole in the floor at BBC Radio 2, which opened up literally the size of a coaster, and they put four plastic fence rails around it with a sign saying ‘Danger, Hole’.

“And I thought if we had anything like that care given to our roads, you wouldn’t allow half the junctions in London to exist. And I started to think like that. And then the tech came along too, and I started filming.”

What started out as a “Kumbaya” approach to navigating London’s roads – “peace and love to all, singing the words to Imagine, cycling along, smiling” – quickly gave way, Vine says, to his post-Covid realisation that “it was a combination of bad streets and bad drivers that caused road danger”.

“I suppose that’s when I had the logical thought that it wasn’t enough to sail along smiling at everyone, Kumbaya. I needed to start minding, and start really minding,” he said.

“It’s not enough just to take what you’re given. As a cyclist, we have to be at the forefront.”

“Cyclists are made to feel like they’re saying something revolutionary for wanting to be safe”

His position at the forefront of supporting cycling projects and opposing road danger has, however, meant that Vine has attracted a substantial amount of critics.

In 2022, the Radio 2 presenter was found to have breached the BBC’s impartiality rules by publicly voicing his support for low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) and safer cycling infrastructure near his home in Chiswick, after a local anti-LTN group lodged a complaint with the broadcaster concerning Vine’s social media output.

> “I am still allowed to praise cycle lanes”: Jeremy Vine responds to BBC impartiality ruling

With the BBC’s stance on impartiality under the spotlight in recent years, does Vine believe it has affected his desire to advocate for safer cycling infrastructure?

“It has been problematic,” he admits. “I’m here at the BBC. I’ve got to be impartial. Obviously, I’m very impartial on every single thing – except my own life and my own personal safety. Funnily enough, I’m not really very impartial on that.

“We’re not impartial on litter. We’re not impartial on cruelty to animals. People have misunderstood this impartiality thing. You know, I can’t think of where impartiality comes in. In this area, it was preposterous for someone to complain that I was too positive about the cycle lane in Chiswick, when for the last 40 years we’ve had four lanes of cars and no cycling at all.

“The impartial position, surely, is that you have 50 per cent of the road space in London given to cyclists. That’s impartial. Now, I’m not asking for that.

Jeremy Vine (credit: Jeremy Vine)

“I also think the BBC is not stupid. The key thing in broadcasting is to be your authentic self and I’m so rigorous on party politics, on the Middle East, and this and that, I’m very, very careful to tread a fine line.

“I am not impartial on my own personal safety. I’m not impartial on the death of Esme Weir, the little girl on a scooter who’s going down the pavement and a fucking truck parks on the pavement and kills her, and there’s not even a conviction. I’m not impartial on that.

“And if I sound like I’ve been triggered, yes, I am sorry, but it’s incredible the gaslighting of cyclists, to make us feel like we’re saying something revolutionary, if we simply say we want to be safe when we travel to work. We don’t want to die.

“And the reason people buy these massive wankpanzers or Kensington tractors is because they’ve been told they’re safer. But we’re not allowed to say, well, we’d like to be safer too.”

“Cyclists kill fewer people than cows every year, and cows aren’t triggering all these crazy people”

Despite this resolute stance, Vine admits that the constant barrage of criticism he receives for his videos on X/Twitter – mostly, though not always, focused on examples of bad or dangerous driving on his commute to work – has started to wear on him recently.

“When I put stuff on social media, invariably, without exception, I’m told that I had done something wrong that put me in danger. Or I shouldn’t have been on the road anyway, because I don’t pay road tax,” he says.

Jeremy Vine video 13/09/2023 (Twitter) (credit: road.cc)

“But the trolling has got to me a bit, and I feel like I might rest up so drivers can relax. There’ll still be Cycling Mikey and the others, but I might have a break, because it’s got a bit exhausting.

“If you’re reversed over by a van in a cycle lane, it cannot be your fault – but 95 per cent of the people who replied to my video said it was my fault. So I suppose it’s a bit wearing. My wife says to me, ‘put down the phone, it’s blowing up’.”

> Jeremy Vine rides penny-farthing along cycle lane... gets blocked off by a driver who ignored cyclist priority

Turning his attention to where the “real danger” on the road lies, Vine says: “I think the thing these online debates miss out on is that, yes, cyclists can go through red lights and that’s not a good thing – but when a car goes through a red light, they kill. And cars kill 700 and cyclists kill three.

“Cyclists kill fewer people than cows do every year, and cows aren’t seeming to trigger all these crazy guys who get so angry. So, it's really strange to me where the angers come from. It’s just been unleashed by social media.

“I think we’re just right in the middle of the culture wars, and that’s so unfortunate. And I don’t understand it, because I look around at cyclists in London, and if you’ve got a good cycle lane, you’ll get kids in it – they’re not political. They’re just trying to have bit of exercise, a bit of fun.

“It’s way better than being in a car. Car drivers can’t move around, they’re so angry with each other. It’s awful. Driving in London is horrible. So, this should be the answer for everyone, but for some reason, it’s triggering. I honestly don’t understand it.”

Elsewhere on the podcast, Jeremy pitches a few of his, ahem, unusual ideas to make things better for cyclists in London, chats about his general relationship with all things cycling and bikes, why Cycling Mikey should get a police pension, and the perils of eating chopsticks at the wheel.

Oh, and there were also a few bang-on Trump impressions thrown in for good measure.

Meanwhile, in part two, Ryan, Jack, and Emily look back over the past 100 episodes, four years, and 6,000 or so minutes of the podcast – and there’s a chance for you to win some excellent road.cc swag, so get listening…

The road.cc Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music, and if you have an Alexa you can just tell it to play the road.cc Podcast. It’s also embedded further up the page, so you can just press play.

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