Last week, Jeremy Vine shared a video of a motorist being abusive to a cyclist. Nothing new there, I hear you say. After all, the light-footed BBC presenter is famous for cruising around London with a sophisticated camera rig on his head. But on this occasion, it was very much the cyclist who was at fault.

The cyclist in question, Michael van Erp – who likewise records his journeys on a body camera and uploads them regularly to his CyclingMikey YouTube channel – had spotted a driver using his phone while stuck in traffic.

What’s the big deal, you might ask? The cars weren’t going anywhere. But this wasn’t enough for van Erp, who informed the poor driver that he was breaking the letter of the law, just like those Covid busybodies who used to remind you that it was still illegal to sit on a bench in the middle of a deserted park, even if you were eating a scotch egg large enough to count as a substantial meal. ‘I’ll be reporting it to the police,’ Van Erp said (in his Twitter profile, he claims to have shopped 1,387 drivers in the last four years).

I say ‘poor driver’. But his response to being targeted, though hugely entertaining, was not easy to justify. The furious allegations that he levelled at van Erp, including that he had never had sex, as well as the invitation to come over to the car and pleasure him, were more than a little infra dig. But the hollowness of the supposed offence – who exactly was the motorist endangering by texting in stationary traffic? – made it hard to empathise with van Erp as Jeremy Vine apparently did..

Now, as regular readers may be aware, I am one of those awful cyclists. Lycra; padded shorts; those irritating reflective spectacles; guilty as charged, on all counts. Recently, however, I took the thing to the next level. Going full middle-aged cliché, I bought myself a Brompton, with which in folded guise I commute from Winchester to London, and upon which in unfolded form I trundle from Waterloo to the offices of the Jewish Chronicle, the paper I am fortunate enough to edit.

The experience of commuting by bicycle once again in central London – I moved out to Winchester 15 years ago – has led me to an overwhelming question. Why on Earth would anybody be a van Erp-style cycling vigilante? As I’ve discovered for myself these past few weeks, cyclists already own central London.

My preconception before going full Brompton was that London would be a hellhole of danger. Cyclists, I thought, would be disparaged and disregarded by motorists, and squashed by oblivious HGV drivers while turning suddenly left. In 2019 I was almost killed in a car accident, after which I took up sports cycling, possibly due to the bump on the head. So I was a little nervous of plunging into the metal and smoke perched atop a pair of clown wheels..

What I discovered was a different world. Once I had got used to the folding of the contraption – for a few weeks I would walk around cradling the flailing Brompton in two hands like an injured python before working out that you had to lower the saddle at a certain point in the process if you wanted to lock it all together – I fell in love with it. Riding a Brompton makes it impossible to take cycling seriously, as I do three times a week on my racer. The gears are too widely-spaced to make a sensible cadence possible, and speed and power are as remote a notion as agility from Boris Johnson. All of which makes riding the thing an experience of pure fun.. And then you fold it up and peacock off to work!

More to the point, London is a different place compared to 15 years ago. There are far more cyclists now, moving in great swarms and chevrons and phalanxes, and there are established rat-runs along cycle lanes that sometimes evoke the spirt of the peloton. Drivers seem hyper-aware of us, accelerating considerately, behaving courteously, crawling along behind without pounding the horn and even giving way on occasion. Once you get the hang of your regular route, and learn to predict where the traffic will come from, it feels… well, maybe not safe, but certainly not unsafe.

All of which is to say that in central London, cyclists rule the road. Most of us don’t bother obeying red lights when there’s no reason to do so, channelling the spirit of the driver with his phone out in a traffic jam perhaps. Personally, I always observe the Highway Code, of course. But it’s bliss.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/we-dont-need-bike-vigilantes-cyclists-already-own-the-roads/