This is an article by John Scott and was in the Cape Times and also on iol.co.za today. It made me smile and we need more of that. Last week a son-in-law came off his bicycle at the bottom of a hill in Kommetjie, during a race. He had swerved to avoid a bakkie, and ended up under an oncoming car. He was saved from death by his helmet but his face looked as if he had barely survived 10 rounds against Mike Tyson. Relieved that he wasn't more seriously injured, family members sitting round a supper table with him two nights later joked about his looks, and told him not to laugh if it hurt. He said it hurt even if he didn't. But several having ridden the Argus tour themselves, they knew how easy it was to fly over the handlebars, unintentionally. Personally, I think cycling on the Peninsula's roads these days is a high-risk activity, more dangerous than sky-diving or driving a cash-in-transit van. So I was interested in a list of safety tips for both motorists and cyclists published in a newspaper this week. The very first was that motorists should treat cyclists as they would fellow motorists. Alas, if only motorists treated motorists as if they were fellow motorists. Many don't. They act as if fellow motorists have no right to share the road with them, and flash them to the side if they can't pass immediately. So what hope for cyclists? Another tip is that motorists should give cyclists a 1.5m-wide berth when overtaking. But 1.5m may be several centimetres too many if a cyclist decides to train on a narrow, busy road during peak times, and holds up a string of 20 vehicles. "Be patient - when the road is too narrow to overtake a cyclist safely, wait until the oncoming lane is clear," says a third tip. You can wait so long that you wonder if you shouldn't give him a little hoot, to make him more aware of the congestion he is causing. But hooting is verboten, too. It "may startle the cyclist and cause him to veer into the road". How else, though, to suggest to a bunch of cyclists ahead to ride in single file? The point is that a lot of our roads are not suitable for safe shared usage by cyclists and busy motor traffic, no matter how sympathetic some motorists may be. Thank goodness the rest aren't all as intolerant as David Quantick who, in his book Grumpy Old Men, accuses cyclists of acting like cars half the time. "They take up a whole lane, so you have to drive along looking at their smug bony backsides, parking in front of you at traffic lights so that either you have to let them go first, or ram right up their aforementioned smug bony backsides. "Oh, but then they decide they aren't a car, and ride through a red light ... they have a smugness and laziness that previously was only found in members of the French aristocracy and law students." There is much more in this vein, but I won't quote it in case it provokes road rage in other GOM even before they have taken their cars out of the garage. These days you wouldn't catch me on a bike (which I used to ride to and from the local railway station) unless a man first cleared the road with a red flag.
