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All of this is revealed in today’s Guardian:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/…/0,11109,1670841,00.html
Elsewhere in today’s paper, author Matt Seaton, the Guardian’s ‘two wheels’ correspondent, wants cyclists to take ‘driving tests’.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/…/0,3604,1671578,00.html
According to Seaton, author of roadie memoir ‘The Escape Artist’, "there’s nothing more visible than a cyclist breezing through a red light, it is spectacularly bad PR. According to an official at Cycling England, the body charged with promoting cycle use, one of the chief reasons why the Department for Transport is so unenthusiastic about cycling is because the Home Office dumps on its doorstep the vast postbag of letters about the outrages perpetrated by "Lycra louts" – cycling without lights, riding on the pavement, and, above all, ignoring traffic signals. In other words, when a cyclist runs a red light, the rest of us might as well get out the old revolver and fire one off at our collective foot."
He ends by throwing down this gauntlet:
"Cyclists rightly want more measures and facilities in their favour, but as these rights are granted, it is time to accept some responsibility. Pedestrians and other road users deserve considerate, safe cyclists. Because civil servants so long made cyclists second-class citizens by planning roads that in effect designed us out of the system, we have acquired a tremendous sense of self-righteous entitlement – even to behave badly. It’s really time we got over it. Taking a test would show we have."
