BBC Panorama – Road Rage: Cars v Bikes – the road.cc Podcast debrief

I find the 'everyone drives' assumption odd from the BBC which is also accused of being London-centric. I suppose most adults do drive outside London, but yes in London it's very common not to drive.

I didn't learn to drive until I was 29, neither of my parents owned a car because they never learned to drive. I was born in London, used public transport or walked as a kid, bought a decent cycle in my teens and never looked back. Only learned to drive so I could share driving with my girlfriend, we split up and I kept on cycling to work, the shops or to see friends. Personally 95% bof the time I would rather cycle than drive. I live in a village with almost no public transport and need a car to get most of the way to work, or to go to the supermaket. The most important things I need in a car is: cheap to run, easy to repair, CD player to listen to decent music and enough space with the seats down to get my cycle in the back. 

those of us who dont live in London think the BBC is already "London-centric" enough (particularly topical as the BBC are dismantling their regional content), I remember a couple of London MPs on one of their politics shows discussing the night tube or night buses, and how they couldnt understand why anyone would own a car with such fantastic public transport, and it had to pointed out to them "night buses" to most of the rest of the country equates to the last bus is 5pm, assuming there even is a bus.

77% of UK households owns a car according to the lastest stats, I believe locally for me its up around 86%-90%. I dont think the BBC are only representing some marginal majority when it comes to motoring issues that impact the UK population.

in fact one of my criticisms of this Panorama episode was it ended up focussed too much on only London cycling issues like the Holborn gyratory,the Kensington bike lane, Cycling Mikeys stuff, none of which linked with any of the items from the rest of country, because theyre very much London specific issues, not UK cycling specific problems. If they reinstall Kensington bike lane, or fix Holborn, will that make it safer to ride along the A1094 to Aldeburgh, no because its fundamentally a road that you take your life in your (or drivers) hands to cycle on and thats fundamentally the general issue that faces cyclists on UK roads.

I think the most relevant point you highlighted in this podcast is they went searching for the conflict, and thats absolutely what every segment they picked was about because theres no real thread linking between a cyclist being hit in Ashby de la Zouche by a car to two riders being killed to Mikey standing on Gandalf corner, which fwiw he's a pedestrian in much of that stuff, its just a collection of stuff that ended in conflict where one party involved happens to ride a bike.