Boardman is openly angry about what he sees as misleading media coverage that presents cyclists as reckless and dangerous when, in a statistic he uses regularly, more Britons are killed by cows or lightning every year than by bikes.
I like this analogy.
What kind of anti cycling/scaremongering stories are being featured in the UK?
It’s the ones where you don’t see cyclists anywhere until they’re all but running a light, running you over and running their mouth at the very same time. It’s a bicyclerati trifuckta.
Otherwise, you never see the dozen people who use a given bicycle route on any given day, as they’re largely invisible and conforming and their appearance will be brief anyway.
It’s kinda a survivor bias, I guess. In my own case, I was in a crosswalk and not watching for the guy blowing the red light to all but run me over and cursing me out for the experience and my inability to eagerly give way to his greater human worth. It’s classic survivor bias, as I definitely haven’t seen that man since (please let karma sort him), nor really had a problem with the thousand-odd passers I didn’t notice using a designated bike path in the years since.
Shame we let the likes of Jeremy Vine be a media figurehead for it
