A quantity with direction and magnitude. To guide directly to a desired point. A transmission agent for memes or pathogens

It’s a normal morning, the traffic is reasonable, the roads are a little damp, but what wind there is is, gratifyingly, mainly a tail. So far, so typical.

I’m ticking along the Embankment just along from the Chelsea Physic Garden. There’s a car next to me who I’ve been tracking for about half a mile and a lorry just in front of us. I’m being cautious with the lorry but the traffic is slowing ahead because of the lights on the south end of Chelsea Bridge, so I do go up his nearside. The visibility is good, he’s not obviously making any leftward intentions and I’m mindful that while this isn’t always advisable, I’m carrying enough speed that I’ll only be beside him for a couple of seconds and there seems to be plenty of space.

So now I’m in front of him and, as there often is, there’s a police check of some description in the lay-by behind the Royal Hospital.

So there’s a copper who has decided that the lorry behind me is to be pulled over. Pop-quiz, what does he do? Yes, children, he walks straight out into the road in front of me. Now, we all know that’s dangerous, don’t we?

A policeman doing his job. But doing it in the road. My road.

Nice work fella. I’m doing 35kph+, it’s reasonably light by now and I’m well lit; there is no excuse. You give me about 18 inches of gap, but you are still moving out and you’re not even looking at me. You give me no indication that you are treating me safely, you’re waving at the lorry and moving to intercept him, through me.

You’ve got a job to do, but that is a classic example of what cyclists have to put up with. This traffic cop has no empathy with my situation; most drivers don’t.

That road is a busy cycle route into town and, at that time of the morning, is chock full of both cyclists and vehicles. Not that this copper apparently understands that.

[Video to follow.]

For a couple of mechanical reasons I had cause to travel a little slower this morning, nothing too major, I just wanted to be able to stop more steadily (a small bulge in my front tyre and a desire not to clip it with the front brake blocks mainly).

So I was taking things a little more leisurely, cutting a few mph off my cruising speed and letting the speed fall a little earlier approaching junctions and hazards. Life in the slow lane, if you will, and it’s a different place! Normally I bash along passing most people, grappling with the burn from the lights and generally mixing it with the cool fast kids at the front (beating more than I lose to, natch – there aren’t many non-RLJs who’ll stay ahead of me

The manners back there were awful. Now, I’m not perfect, but when I get to some lights, I won’t queue jump. I might go to the outside, but I won’t go around and then push in, or go up the inside (or go on to the pavement). On the plus side, at least people were stopping, but the manners at the lights just seemed so much worse to me today. I was cut up and undertaken way more than I would consider polite. Maybe some of it was that I will have been taking my normal (fairly aggressive) road position and wasn’t necessarily then punching my weight, but that didn’t excuse all of it.

Well, maybe it’s about seeing the world from a different viewpoint, walking a mile in another man’s shoes (which is always a good idea, because if you realise that he was right, he’s a mile away. And you have his shoes.) I’m sure that the minor infractions that other user groups complain about cyclists is because we can, but that’s a reason, not an excuse. Just because you can do something doesn’t always mean you should.

The excellent London Cyclist blog asked this morning, what London’s cyclists thought of the tube strike?

The general concensus was that there were more out there and that there were many who really didn’t understand how it worked. As I suggested in a post 3 years ago (almost to the day)

Your normal tube journey has tourists getting in the way and making you grumble. You fairweather, occasional cyclists are the tourist on my tube. Don’t be surprised when I grumble at you!

Much has changed in three years, but apparently not that much. There were definitely more bikes and definitely more people who were clueless as to how to ride in traffic and, as importantly, how to ride considerately in a group.

While I’m not going to tout myself as some elite level cyclist I have ridden for years in pelotons, on club rides and just generally in groups who know what they are doing, some of the n00bs scared me yesterday: both from a blatant sense of danger, but also that it is their behaviour who drivers and other road users will remember. I’m generally happy to wait my turn – I’m faster than most and I’ll let my speed do the talking when the lights go red, but the amount of queue-ignorance and just pure bad manners was simply staggering.

It is not a race track out there but n00bs see people riding fast and assume it is, not to mention the queueing at lights (let’s leave the jumping and skirting down on pavements alone for a moment). You wouldn’t jump the queue when getting your coffee when you get to work so why do it when queuing for the lights?

After almost 20 years and over 40000 miles on London’s roads, it is clearly a better place to cycle now than in the early 90s when I started regularly riding here. I’m afraid, though, that we’re in danger of seeing a backlash if the general level of bike nouse doesn’t increase. We might have safety in numbers, but we’re going see more clampdowns and rules because we obviously can’t control ourselves.

Some predictions

• Cycling will be banned in many areas where it is currently tolerated, perhaps as a result of being shown as not being able to play nicely with the other kids e.g. on the South Bank.
• Some of the semi-autonomous districts (BIDs) will be looking to ‘solve’ the problem themselves (as highlighted by the well argued I Bike London). Canary Wharf, as another example, is semi-private and it wouldn’t suprise me if the landlord started actively putting obstacles in the way of cyclists (rather than merely passively making cycling out here problematic and dangerous)
• There will be some enforced insurance and possibly even a licensing scheme. If you’re a member of the LCC or the BTC, possibly even on your house insurance, you already have third-party insurance. And just like car drivers have to be insured to drive their vehicle (of course many aren’t) and it’s not beyond the realms of credibility to expect that cyclists will have to do the same.
• Number plates. If you can anonymously break the rules, leaving fuming drivers in your wake, it’s not going to be long before someone mentions some system for being able to identify you.

The weather turned slightly worse this morning and there were fewer people out there, so until the next tube strike, I expect the roads to return to something approaching normal.