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news
Daily Mail story Richard Littlejohn Highway Code changes: Daily Mail publishes "error-strewn" Richard Littlejohn column attacking cyclists
The Daily Mail and The Telegraph have today published opinion pieces slamming the incoming Highway Code changes, and launching outspoken attacks on cycling in Britain.
Florida resident and Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn's work is headlined: 'Bike lane Britain...the Great Leap Backwards. Under cover of Covid, officials have turned our city centres into crazy golf courses giving priority to Lycra-clad lunatics on racing bikes'.
In which he blasts the "mutton-headed communists" and "Genghis [Sadiq] Khan" for supporting cycle infrastructure, while also ripping into cycle lanes built during the pandemic, "Lycra-clad lunatics", "suicide jockeys", two abreast riding, the new 'Hierarchy of Road Users' and the regularly mythbusted road tax.
The Guardian's political correspondent Peter Walker called the column "unhinged, error-strewn and downright weird [...] which adds in elements of racist banter for good measure. All involved should feel deeply ashamed," and awarded Littlejohn the "cycling myth media bingo contest for all-time".
The writer drew analogy between Britain's cycling infrastructure and Chairman Mao's 'kingdom of bicycles', and accused UK transport policy of ruining 21st-century Britain.
Littlejohn claimed city centres are now "crazy golf courses, intended to frustrate freedom of movement by giving priority to Lycra-clad lunatics on racing bikes and suicide jockeys on e-scooters."
Commenting on the Highway Code changes coming into effect this week, he wrote: "Bikers are encouraged to ride two or three abreast in the middle of the road, deliberately to slow traffic to a crawl. Motorists will be expected to cede to both bikes and pedestrians when turning left."
The Code actually states riding two abreast "can be safer to do so", but that cyclists should "allow them [drivers] to overtake (for example, by moving into single file or stopping) when you feel it is safe to let them do so".
Walker also disputed the claim, amongst many, that "pro-bike extremists were given a blank sheet of paper to write their own rules."
Also: LittleJohn’s claim cyclists were “given a blank sheet of paper” to rewrite Highway Code notably echo comments of @IAMRoadSmart on radio yesterday. It’s not true, and such sentiments have probably helped make life on the road for me & loved ones a bit less safe this morning.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) January 25, 2022
It is not the first time the Mail has been accused of misrepresenting Highway Code changes.
Last week, a MailOnline story told readers that one new rule "tells cyclists to pedal in the middle of the road" when in fact it provides advice about road positioning in certain situations such as on quiet roads or in slow-moving traffic, and riding in primary position has been encouraged by cycling instructors for decades.
> Press misrepresents Highway Code changes – just days before they come into force
The Telegraph too published a provocative opinion piece this morning, titled 'Pedal-pushers have taken over British roads – even as a cyclist, I think it’s time to rein them in'.
The introduction read, "The Highway Code’s new hierarchy of road use (sic) is taking things a bit too far in favour of the smug 'bikeltons' who manage to annoy everyone."
Last week, the Evening Standard was accused of running a misleading headline on a story titled, 'New Highway Code rule will fine drivers £1,000 for opening door with wrong hand'.
The Express went for 'POLL: Do you support new fine for opening car with wrong hand as cyclists given priority?'
Duncan Dollimore, head of campaigns at the national cycling charity, told road.cc: "A government led public awareness campaign should have started by now, with simple, accurate and memorable messages.
"Instead, less than a week before major Highway Code changes are being introduced, too many people are hearing about them through inaccurate news reports like this from the Evening Standard."
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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123 comments
No surprise from the daily Heil, even so whatta W⚓
Unfortunately, pantomime villain and road safety sabotouer Nick Freeman may be correct about one thing. We all saw how nasty some people got when asked to wear a facemask in public spaces, to the point that even though a legal requirement, many high street shops instructed staff not to engage or attempt to enforce the policy due to threat of physical and verbal assault.
I imagine those same people who are willing to punch a shop worker for asking them to mask up will have no hesitation on the back of being wound up by ill informed crap on talk radio or the hilighted Mail opinion piece in seeing it as their public duty to essentially conduct a campaign of terror against any person on a bicycle who has the misfortune to cross their path.
Those of an uneven temper are going to bark and bite as always. But agreed - there is a question. Are they significant enough to derail efforts to make positive change (in number, volume or potential negative actions)?
So far no-one killed me on the roads and I've not had enough bad experiences (or bad enough ones) to stop me. Others certainly have been discouraged by crashes, aggression or just the threat and unpleasantness of mixing with motor vehicles. Even if it's but one of the many reasons most people aren't cycling or even walking much.
Can these folks just be ignored? Getting into a contest would seem counter-productive. That's a favourite narrative e.g. "culture war" / "war on the motorist". Or do we have to win them over, accommodate them etc. until either there's a cultural shift or we somehow get sufficient good infra so they're much less relevant?
Some people are just unhappy and will kick out at anything. For most there are no complaints about something as long as they feel they're fairly provided for.
how much more do we have to give to accomdate them?
It's like 80% iof the public space in any road being devoted to motor vehicles, and then claims that pedestrians should compromise about pavement parking
Interestingly I did my usual 3.5 km commute home today and got very close passed by a vehicle which almost immediately turned off into the hospital near my house. By overtaking me dangerously they saved themselves a maximum of 10 seconds. I followed them in and spoke politely to the driver, who said that she had gone slowly past me and she had left "plenty of space". I pointed out that as there was a stream of cars in the other direction there was no way she could have given me anything like enough space .
She took this on board and said something about the highway code having changed. I explained that it hadn't actually changed Inthis respect and we agreed that she would give people more space I future
I broke my usual rule about non-engagement today with a very similar incident. A van close passed me, parked cars both sides, on a bend and with an oncoming car (who had to stop abrubptly), only for them to immediately turn left up a dead-end.
So I had a polite chat. Apparently I was too far out from the parked cars and he had no idea a car was going to come around the bend! Door zone explained, pointed out I had cameras, asked to be more careful in future. He seemed ok about it, but who knows.
I agree mungecrundle. I mean some of the posts that I have come across :-
"I need bigger bull bars on my motor. Stupid rules."
"Can see my horn getting more use"
"No insurance no leeway"
"Points are going to go mental for Lycra biker clipping, Game on!"
It is genuinely frightening that there are so many people out there behind the wheel of a car that genuinely have no clue about the highway code or laws is staggering.
Just had this priceless dialogue on Facebook
Them "Most motorists don't know they can pass a cyclists no matter what the road markings, you get the old folk sitting for miles behind a cyclists all because of the centre road markings, being solid white, they think they are not allowed to pass"
Me "Thats not what the law says.....'quotes law' it says that you can only overtake if a cyclist is going less than 10mph if you have a solid white line against you"
Them "it the law if you Don't know what you're actually allowed to do , give up driving or cycling"
Me "I understand what the law says and it's not what you think"
Them "all vehicles can pass a cyclist look it up its on google"
Me "I literally quoted the law from the legislation.gov.uk website and I trust that more than what google says"
Them "How would a driver know how fast a cyclists is going , this is why you can legally pass if it's safe to do so"
Me "you have this magical device called a speedometer that tells you how fast you are going.... maybe you should take your own advice as you don't know what you're actually allowed to do."
It is genuinely frightening that there are so many people out there behind the wheel of a car that genuinely have no clue about the highway code or laws is staggering
Is Them the police?
Nope just some random person who think that they know the rules of the road because google told them so
For many people, though, asking Google and picking the first hit no matter what is how they do serious research nowadays.
It gets better, in defense of their case they posted a link (under a separate thread) to this article https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/7496912/when-you-can-legally-cross-double-white-lines-road/
Apparently that article says that cyclists can be overtaken anywhere...... except it really doesnt...
I'm guessing that was the extent of their google research
A bold claim at the top of the article:
In my experience, most drivers haven't got the first clue.
Yes, but is Them the Police?
They're right - I mean, it's not like cars have speedometers right there on the dashboard, is it...?
They're right - I mean, it's not like cars have speedometers right there on the dashboard, is it...?
They do know, it's just that they and the police (at least, in Lancashire) don't think it's a law that should be taken seriously and Parliament can get st****d. This is Transit lorry MF64 WEO
I've lost track of all the ill informed threads I've been caught up in of late. If anything the current 'discussion' has revealed how little knowledge people have of the HC or how much they've forgotten. It also demonstrates how poor their understanding of road craft is and their Inability to grasp these very basic driving concepts. It's like cyclists- the law breakers actually have a better understanding of the roads then the fully trained and licensed individuals out there.
but in some ways its not surprising when the media they consume is pushing out this daily diet of stuff thats a load of codswallop on the HC.
how is the average person supposed to deduce Mike Graham is talking nonsense about the new rules with roundabouts, or Howard Cox hasnt read the specific part that accounts for speed and passing distances of cyclists, that Nick Ferrari talking about how he'd like to go and stroke his favourite cycling lane in a discussion on the HC is "just 'aving a laff".
These people are presented as "experts" by the media, they arent challenged, they arent corrected when they demonstrably get things wrong, and then their misinformed views get consumed by people who for whatever reason no longer have that questioning outlook to information they are presented with they just consume it, and then repeat it to their friends and family and it extends from there till its like group think.
Yes it does reveal that, and one of the big drivers for a lot of this are the local rags that are publishing "major changes to the highway code" articles... for example about the fact that cyclists "can now stay in the left lane on the approach to a roundabout and go all the way round"........ it's almost like the journalists never knew what was there in the first place..... the fact that the HC has said for years that cyclists can stay in the left lane and continue round a roundabout.
These same papers spent decades printing all sorts of lies and misinformation about the EU - and people swallowed it. So why not people who ride bikes? Why does the UK press hate cycles so much? Why do so many people in the UK show such open hostility towards cycles? I live between the EU and London and I can't speak for every EU country but those that I am familiar with do not have such an active and ongoing hostile campaign against citizens who ride cycles.
Where I live someone has posted that bikes should be banned from the high st.
The speed limit is 20 and traffic is restricted so I don't know how these 'ideas' come to light.
The real problem isn't the rabid anti-cycling rhetoric of the gammons, it's that the msm ignores their ranting. It's become normal and accepted to rave at cyclists and no-one says a word, no-one points out that these people are irrational, demented, hate-filled, pompous gas bags, or that if they said anything like that about any other group, they would be ridiculed, taunted and possibly prosecuted.
But it's ok when they denigrate, condemn and threaten cyclists.
As an outsider looking in, these rabid mouth frothing displays of confected outrage are hilarious. I mean he's basically labelled the Tories as a bunch of Communists and Boris as Chairman Mao, I don't know how Littlejohn can wear shoes if he can't tell left from right!
Watched Ashley Neal's spin on it all earlier today. He was actually really good and the comments in general are positive and even the negative ones are calm and rational with the commentator happy to interact.
I didn't realise Richard Littlejohn actually lives in Florida now. That being the case, it's rather ironic that he's waffling on about road safety. Florida has one of the worst records on road safety of any state in the US and is up there with the likes of North and South Carolina and Montana for bad road crashes. Drink driving is a really big problem in Florida.
The road safety record of the US is poor to start with, with 11 deaths per 100,000 of population in 2019 (pre pandemic) compared 2.8 deaths per 100,000 of population in the UK for that year. And in the US road deaths of vulnerable road users (pedestrians and cyclists) actually increased in 2020 as the pandemic started due to an increase in speeding and DUI. I haven't seen the preliminary stats for the US in 2021 yet but I doubt they're any better. People in glass houses and all that...
As an update on my previous post and to highlight the US problem on road safety, I saw some really scary stats earlier today. In 2021 there were over 1,700 people killed in crashes in North Carolina. Bear in mind that NC has a population of 10.6 million. In the UK last year preliminary data suggests around 1,500 people died in road crashes, and the UK has a population of 67 million.
First time post from a lurker. I came across that Littledick article on next door. It was posted on a thread where a group of people are protesting about a safer streets consultation.
The thread has all the usual suspects including how the 'new' primary position guidance is dangerous on a narrow street.
I looked at the article and cannot believe that vile shit can be published in a reasonable society... wtf was the 'chinese minds' about.
The Heil will almost certainly defend any complaint on the basis that no reasonable person would believe it. Though the comment (over 3k at 13:00) suggests the readership is full of non reasonable people given the highest rated were racist, celebrating people dying and fully subscribing to the lies in the article.
I sent my first ever complaint to IPOS. Then I asked Club Med how they felt about paying for advertising next to that shite, and whether they want their holidays filled with Heil commentators.
I can only wish that all first posts were so positive and constructive. Thank you and please continue posting.
Nice summary. Littlejohn and his like are just trolling and playing to their assumed audience, aren't they? Which doesn't make it better but living in Florida and given his political views, there's statistically a high chance he's not covid jabbed and is in line for a messy demise quite soon. Shame.
Speaks volumes of the standard of driving that many claim drivers will hit the car in front when they stop unexpectedly as a result of the HC changes.
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