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news
CyclingMikey, City of London Magistrates (credit - CyclingMikey Youtube)CyclingMikey named by Daily Mail as one of the “top villains of 2024” – alongside the Post Office, VAR, Oasis, Gregg Wallace… and Paddington Bear
We know, we know the window for publishing long, meandering reviews of 2024 shut days ago – but it seems someone forgot to tell the Daily Mail.
Because on Friday, the newspaper’s online counterpart decided to belatedly celebrate the New Year by compiling a list of the MailOnline’s “top 12 villains of 2024” – featuring none other than road safety campaigner and camera cyclist CyclingMikey.
Yes, that’s right. Nestled alongside the likes of the Post Office, Gregg Wallace, Oasis’ dynamic ticketing policy, Just Stop Oil, and Paddington Bear (hold on, what?) in the Mail’s list of nefarious figures and divisive topics was CyclingMikey – real name Mike van Erp – the camera cyclist who has reported thousands of motorists, including the occasional celebrity, for their rule-breaking driving and mobile phone use at the wheel.
(MailOnline’s “top 12 villains of 2024”)
A contentious figure on social media, where he uploads footage of road users committing traffic offences to his X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube channels, Mikey has long been established as regular fodder for anti-cycling articles in certain sections of the national press, which have branded Van Erp a “vigilante” for his prolific third-party reporting.
So, it’s no surprise that the MailOnline staffer tasked with piecing together the publication’s “12 top villains of 2024” described the cyclist and road safety campaigner as a “pedalling pest” and the “bane of London’s roads due to his holier than thou antics”.
But what particular Mikey moment caught the Mail’s eye this year? Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, the incident that earned Van Erp’s spot on the paper’s villainous list for April was the rather bizarre post – covered on the road.cc live blog at the time – which showed Mikey himself committing a traffic offence by obliviously riding through a set of red lights.
In the clip, which saw Van Erp stopped at traffic lights on Eccleston Street in Westminster, one of the four lights visible soon turned green, apparently signalling the cyclist to advance and cross the junction.
However, with no traffic following, and the benefit of camera footage to look back on, he worked out the other three lights were red and the green light was in fact for traffic coming from another direction and had been twisted out of place.
Having realised the error of his ways, Mikey then took the bold step of uploading the footage to social media and even invited any trolls who wished to report the incident to the police, giving the time and date of the incident to assist any report.
“It’s my mistake, I hold my hands up, I’m at fault there,” Mikey said during the YouTube video. “I missed that the other two traffic lights were still red. I realised something was wrong when the scooter rider next to me revved his engine and then stopped, so he obviously almost got caught too, but he and the other scooter rider behind me didn’t follow through.
“That’s probably the best use of video cameras that I have over the years, that I can go back and look at when there’s been a point of conflict or something’s gone unexpectedly and I can find out what went wrong and change my own riding as a result.
“If the police prosecute me, so what? I’ll pay the fine, you’re not going to see me complaining.”
And how did the Mail’s 2024 reviewer react to Van Erp’s admirably principled red light confession?
“Appearing to minimise his crime, the pedalling pest claimed that the intersection in central London was ‘fairly quiet’ and claimed other motorists had also nearly fallen for the traffic light,” the writer said of the “shocking” video.
“The peddling vigilante [what’s he peddling? – Ed] later added that he thought a ‘drunk’ may have twisted the sign ‘to point down the wrong road’.”
Apparently that’s enough to have you listed alongside the Horizon-scandal-laden Post Office, Glasgow’s brilliantly hopeless Willy Wonka Experience, and a certain former Masterchef host as one of the UK’s villains of the year.
But then again, he was also surrounded by the member of the public who threw a milkshake at Nigel Farage, school dinners, Just Stop Oil campaigners, and – I still don’t get this – the apparently “polarising” Paddington Bear.
“Does this mean I’m one of the good guys?” Mikey posted on social media after reading the Mail’s review.
Of course, as noted above, this isn’t the first time that Mikey and other camera cyclists have been negatively characterised in the national press.
In October, after covering the rapid growth in third-party road safety reporting in a news article and in a BBC Breakfast segment, the BBC was criticised by cyclists for referring to both CyclingMikey and fellow safety campaigner Tim on Two Wheels as “vigilantes”, with Van Erp arguing that cyclists who submit footage to the police are, in fact, the “opposite of vigilantes”.
Following a number of complaints, including from Tim himself, who described the “vigilante” reference as “disappointing”, the broadcaster admitted to road.cc that the initial language used in their story was “inappropriate”.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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Yes, it's a lot more difficult when you don't have any traffic queues, and the police don't consider it to be an offence anyway
https://upride.cc/incident/yh66utp_audia1_handheldmobile/
On an aside, I am left wondering if it is ever at all possible to have the words 'right wing' and 'hypocrite' not co-joined,
Everything they touch is so.
They left out The Telegraph and The Daily Mail.
Aside from the single incident which CM owned up to and invited others, with specific details, to report... what exactly does the Daily Fail regard as reasons for saying he is a villian?
(PS, is there any update on whether it was actually reported and if the police actioned it? It would be great to shut up any nay sayers to show CM (and cyclists in general) isn't immune to the law either.)
Or should the Daily Fail label every dangerous driver a villain for causing KSIs and collisions which cost insurance companies a huge amount in payouts, thus increasing motor vehicle premiums to go up for EVERYONE...
Surely, the Daily Mail would not want crime to go unpunished.
Well, if it's broken in a very specific and limited way, then they're probably fine with it.
If a person who gets people off the road for breaking the law by driving while using their phone is a villain then that paper needs reflect on what they should be e reporting on. How many RTI's are hit by car drivers being on their phone.
Obviously Paddington is on the List because he was, until given a British passport, an illegal immigrant. It's not clear if the bear was given British citizenship. He may only have an honorary British passport thus meaning that he is still an illegal immigrant. This would explain the quality newspapers listing of him.
I prefer the term "asylum seeker" or "refugee" as "immigrant" is often used by right-wingers to dehumanise those people and "illegal" is a loaded term that is a matter of opinion until the relevant case has been tried in court (especially if the methods to apply for refugee status have been changed and are no longer viable for people to use until they are already in the country).
As I understand it, "immigrant" is "a foreigner coming to live in the UK" whereas "a Brit moving overseas to live" is an "expat"
An excuse (as if it were needed) to link to the excellent Dan & Dan's Daily Mail song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI
His intentions are good, it's just the way he goes about it sometimes can be a problem. One fears he'll come a cropper one day when says something to the wrong person......
Didn't he already do so when a very important man already breaking the law drove his car into him, then won in court?
That raises the ever-present debate of should one inform the offender that they have been observed. It has often been said to CM, and indeed sometimes to me, "Why do you have to confront them, just film them, report them and let the police deal with it." This is all well and good, but my reply is, and I think CM would say something similar, in the case of phone drivers they are engaged in a potentially life-threatening activity. If one just leaves them to it unchallenged, how is one going to feel if they hit another cyclist or pedestrian down the road whilst still on the phone? I'm happy to take the risk of an irate motorist deciding to get physical in order to stop that happening, although none ever have, plenty of "fronting up" and "come on then" but most aren't too secure outside their safety cages (although I recognise being a six foot tall former rugby player with the (rapidly declining) remnants of a decent physique probably provides a certain amount of deterrent that not everyone enjoys - CM is quite a small chap but extremely courageous and I take my hat off to him for the way he won't let himself be bullied, check out his confrontation with this utter weapon: https://road.cc/content/news/how-would-you-be-camera-now-mikey-293871 )
The Mail demonstrating its utter irrelevance. Claiming that someone making the roads safer for everyone is a villain is perverse, warped and just wrong: some of the DM's most time-honoured and prominent characteristics.
Given that their readers are likely to be wealthy and such people are more likely to use their phone whilst driving, they're just looking after their supporters.
Anyway, the list is clearly wrong: no Feathers McGraw.
Tbf to them they didnt say that was the reason he made their list.
It was because he is a road safety campaigner but in April he published a video of himself jumping a red light and in their words tried to minimise the lawbreaking aspects to it.
For sure a disingenuous reason to make the list. But there's plenty of that going around thesedays, just like click bait headlines
And Feathers McGraw is a fictional character made of plasticine fwiw.
Given paddington was in the list, why not other similar types?
You mean that other ... bugbear, migrants from eg. the middle east getting here via poorer parts of Europe, like Wojtek?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojtek_(bear)
Well Paddington made the list not because of the character, but because of a twitter promotion for the latest film.
The film makers & sponsors had created a Paddington Bear Airbnb in the same street, but not the same house, the films have become associated with, as a competition to celebrate the film premiere that 3 lucky winners could spend the night in.
Which has now also become a tourist hot-spot as a result, alot like the bookshop and homes from Notting Hill did, and various Harry Potter filming locations are.
And the local residents were just fed up of it, more the fact others were making money from their homes than they were, and have just had to put up with the inconvenience of it.
I deal for the Wail, then !
That's what he wants you to think.
Strange how fascism is getting so normalised these days. Most are chasing big Oil money.
The usually tamer Mail could claim to be 'just reporting it' yet I think they should stick to salivating over underage girls.
Facism? Where on Earth did you get that from?
Othering of those in non-conformist outgroups. Lists of persons regarded as "villains" to be hated by society. Language comparing targets to vermin ("claims to have ratted on", "cycling pest"). Comes from an outlet notorious for its historical antisemitism and support for fascist groups ("Hooray for the Blackshirts!"). In the words of J.Edgar Hoover, if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and consorts with other ducks, I say sure as hell it's a duck.
One should always stop on a red if there's crossing traffic or pedestrians who look like they may of use to society in the future. Otherwise why would one🤔😁
I remember this time at a crossroad, I checked that no cars were coming, no pedestrians to be seen, so I started pedaling through the red, only to be struck by a thundering voice behind my back, "Red light!".
That was a police car just behind be, shouting with their megaphone...
Lucky for all of us it was a police car and not a Daily Mail reader with a dashcam, because that's the sort of thing that - coupled with the right headline - will generate a lot of ad revenue for the Mail and a more aggravation for law-abiding people on bikes.
In much the same way GoPro (other brands available) footage of someone driving an SUV doing it would send the road.cc comments section into a frenzy of "throw away the key".
I'm sure you weren't putting yourself or anyone else in any danger, but the optics aren't great ...
In much the same way GoPro footage of someone driving an SUV doing it [RLJ] would send the road.cc comments section into a frenzy of "throw away the key"
Untrue - I regularly post lists on here of videos of drivers committing serious red light offences which are invariably ignored by the police, with no response whatsoever, because everybody knows what Lancashire is like
If you didn't spot a police car behind you then I think your situational awareness needs more work. As you didn't overtake them (which would have certainly made you aware of them), you should have been aware of a vehicle approaching your rear as it's handy to know what way they're indicating so you can be wary of a left hook etc.
You're lucky it wasn't this instead, though
Right whingers will always go for hyberbole, truth twisting, double standards and fauxtrage. Sometimes seen in this parish.
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