Top Gear producer: Cycle safety piece wasn't anti-cyclist, aimed to promote mutual respect on the road

[[[[[ Wilman's responses? Evasive, and economical with the truth, and he knows it full well. Disgraceful.
P.R.

Sedgepeat - you are quite simply wrong and Seanbolton makes the point perfectly well.

I wonder if your views might be at all skewed by the type of bike you ride - the Honda Goldwing in your profile is hardly the type of bike we generally talk about on here is it?

If cycling, being a pedestrian, being a motorcyclist and being a motorist in the busy city are all dangerous (to varying degrees) then the solution can be found simply by looking at the vehicles causing the damage. Make the cities less busy with those vehicles and you'll increase safety for everyone.

Very simple, but politically very difficult - we can yet only dream of cities with hardly any motor vehicles putting their citizens at risk!

But the concept of road cycling especially now and in busy cities is a highly dangerous one. I know it angers many but to describe it as, placing one's unprotected body, on two slender wheels, among many large fast moving essential machines, operated by complete strangers of varied ability and mental capacity, is an accurate description isn't it?

Would humans normally consider doing anything like it and expect to survive?

Let's face the truth instead of burying our heads while people are being killed and maimed daily.

Motorists - 4ft and 4 inches. Learn the bloody difference.

Who cares. JC only has a few series left before his hips finally give way to the strains of inserting his huge fat arse into a sports seat in some italian supercar. He'll end up on 'top mobility scooter'........though he'll still be whinging about bikes.

The screengrab at the top of this article says it all really. Clarkson and the whole Top Gear crew make me vomit.

The whole piece was done in typical Top Gear style, and it was what we've come to expect of them. However, the jet bike bit was not up to their usual standard.

I can put up with smelly BO bits, and even the work harder and get a car line, but the one bit that I found not acceptable and totally distasteful was right at the beginning, with the mangled bike.

If Top Gear has given the expressed view "stop being dicks to one another and everyone follow the rules" then it might have raised some awareness.

They did not.

What they did was make fun of riders who had been trapped under the wheels of a lorry. That's not raising awareness.

As has often been said it is pointless complaining to the BBC about anything. They simply make a statement and ignore the problem. Top Gear used to be good, now its just a vehicle for three old men to act silly for lots of money. For that reason they should avoid important issues - May, Clarkson and Hammond are essentially clowns.

It's obviously a conspiracy against cyclists! The BBC are funded by government and we all know that the powers hate cyclists, I mean look at pleb gate! Ignor the cycling minister it was an establishment campaign of hate for cyclist. As for the episode of top gear well I ask you,give cyclist an inch they have given you a mile can easily be integrated as kill cyclists!

As for the people who think many cyclist are self absorbed and blinkered!get real we're not in favour of sharing the road with cars! Not even if it's a cyclist driving it!

The baffoon clips were obviously not meant as a joke. How on earth could you think something funny is anything but a subliminal message that cyclist are evil.

The missing aeroplane has been taken to Jupiter by J.C and Hamster as there was a bicycle in the hold.

(It's early 6am I'm going the Cheshire Cat in my car with the bike in the boot, so if I'm a little silly I'm tired)

I think people haven't understood the Top Gear Formula particularly well.

90% of the content of the short films is just showing some ageing men being as incompetent as possible, and and calling each other 'pillocks'.

Then there's some massive plot-twist/bomb-shell, and the program ends with everyone sharing the same mock disbelief.

In this case, the 90% idiocy was the set of 4 (IIRC) dismissive, silly, and potentially offensive videos that were shown to the judges (whose role was to look highly unimpressed, thus highlighting how much the comical buffoons had 'missed the point' of their task).

The 'plot-twist' was the last video, which was based on a completely different idea to the others:

Whereas videos 1-4 placed the onus entirely on the cyclist to take responsibility for getting hit, the last message was squared solely at motorists - and improving driver attitudes towards people riding bikes. There were still sly jives about smelly armpits, but it was fundamentally based on a more sensible message; look after the smaller breakable people trying to use the transport network; 'give 'em an inch, because they've given you a mile'.

Clearly, there was a vast amount of stupid, ignorant stuff in the episode, but given it was all in the 'incompetent buffoons completely missing the point' section, I found it hard to get offended.

I feel the show should be judged by its conclusion, not the buffooning* around in the middle. And I don't feel it's conclusion was, really, all that bad.

*maybe 3 uses of this word is excessive...

It's a thinly veiled hate campaign, all the more dangerous as TG insist it's all light hearted and just a joke. Given the fact that motorists kill everyone including each other quite how this can be trivialised into mutual respect is beyond me. Paedophiles and children...let's just respect each other yeah?

Doesn't work there does it? So why should it when one group continually slaughters the other? Holocaust? Let's all just get on? Is that ok too?

Quite how public licence fees are being used to spread and propogate stereotype and general discrimination without being jumped on is testimony to the fact that the BBC is a shambolic and outdated institution run by morons.

I don't live too far from Mr. Willman or another senior member of the TG clan, if the opportunity presents itself I might (just for a joke mind you) run them over and see how light hearted and jovial they feel about wearing adult nappies and dribbling down themselves whilst condemned to a life of serious disability.

Just joking of course Andy, I probably won't do it.

Here is another picture of a cat.

I thought it was great.

I'd suggest anyone who has taken the time to complain to the BBC, and isnt satisified with the response, should continue to escalate the issue until it reaches the BBC Trust. They are an independent body, there to ensure the BBC is regulated and compliant with the BBC Charter (which spells out the reasons for the mandatory licence fee).

For me it was simply disappointing. For all their bluster I believe the team are good guys and I genuinely expected some insight and education for their viewers but there was none. More disappointing was Chris Boardman's involvement, he was simply a stooge for some lame humour, nice fee for him hopefully but did nothing for cycling.

We are giving far too much publicity to Clarkson, Top Gear and the Beeb by even discussing their crass programme.

There were loads of tips on being a better driver around cyclists that most people wont even notice them selves taking in while they were laughing along with the butt and nut jokes.

Quit whining it probably did a better job than the AA's current 'Think Bike' campaign.

There is no question that this, and indeed all TG, represents a threat to cyclists and others on the road. The plain fact is that people (not just cyclists) are killed, hurt and threatened off the roads by people whose potential to do so needs to be controlled, restrained and properly regulated: these people are the ones who drive cars and who watch and make TG.

Hurting, killing and generally endangering others is, as they say, "easily done" by motorists - which is why they need an attitude of humility which is just the opposite of what you see on TYG.

Yu shouldn't treat anyone from TG with this kind of respect. The only basic issue is why it is on the BBC, which is supposed to be a public service.

Strange thing is that the people who might be able to afford a super car that they wank on about on Top Gear are the same people who will fork out £10k for a top spec Cipollini or BMC et al….Not sure why they didn't do their usual fun stuff like we altered 3 bikes to make cyclists safer…May's = More lights, Hammonds = More sounds, Clarkson's = More power and then come the conclusion that it doesn't matter what you ride as the drivers (e.g. the bus drivers) will still try and kill you….Would have been a more entertaining episode.

Motorists: 30 and 50, learn the bloody difference.

http://think.direct.gov.uk/speed.html

He had two messages and thinks the emphasis was on the second one?

1. Cyclists are smelly, childish, red-light-jumping, workshy poor people, and killing them is a funny topic (in stark contrast with TG treatment of soldiers' injuries).

2. Cyclist/Driver mutual respect is good.

Reminds me of folk who say "I'm not a racist but..."

I complained.

I complained about specifics.

I got a stock generic e-mail response.

I got a stock generic e-mail response that didn't address my specific complaint.

Conclusion? The Top Gear crowd are so far up their own smug arses they won't listen to anything but their own conceited point of view. Because it sells. To morons.

I also received the exact same reply via e-mail so it looks like it is a prepared across the board statement and not a reply to the issues that I raised in my complaint to them, When I first went onto the BBC website to register my complaint it guided me to "The only complaint to date" about that particular episode, which was a complaint about the wasting of completely good fruit & veg when it was dropped from a height. I THINK THAT SAYS IT ALL ABOUT THE BBC and their attitude to complaints.

I rather think that Wilman's rejection of criticism is typical BBC 'We know better than you poor, ignorant plebs.' attitude. When was the last time you heard of anyone from the BBC accepting criticism and admitting that they were wrong?

"Mr Wilman said that those first two films were “specifically made to be absurd, and the joke here is centred on the hopeless misinterpretation by Jeremy and James of the brief given to them by Westminster Council.”."

Yes, we understand that Clarkson & May are professionally arrogant & stupid, but this issue is too serious for this to be trotted out as an excuse.

Stewart Lee on Top Gear: http://youtu.be/K7CnMQ4L9Pc

Describes everything that's wrong with the programme quite succinctly really.