If people stop linking to these, they’ll stop writing them.

When will they go away?
How many do we have to ignore?

Cycling is currently popular amongst the affluent – that’s not going to last, they’ll all be into Centrifugal Bumble Puppy next year.

Might as well make hay and try and improve attitudes whilst we have the support.

This must be link bait, no? No-one can actually be that hypocritical and internally inconsistent and be eking out a living as a professional journalist, surely?

Regardless of the content (which we’ve all read a hundred times), the whole thing is basically “there I was enjoying myself, driving purely for the fun of driving, when I encountered a couple of cyclists enjoying themselves, clearly cycling for the fun of cycling. HOW VERY DARE THEY!!”

He’s either intentionally trolling, or he’s an enterprise-grade cretin. Not being familiar with either the author or the publication, it’s difficult for me to be sure which is the case.

No-one can actually be that hypocritical and internally inconsistent and be eking out a living as a professional journalist, surely?

He could simply be so shit, he can’t get readers any other way.

I don’t the Journalist was trolling, I think he was probably struggling with what to come up with that is new/he hasn’t done recently and decided on a stereotype. Dangerous as people read such tripe. I like motorsport magazine. They did an excellent article on all time top Ferrari drivers recently. Pity that such immature/basic journalism is put to their name by this person. Does anyone have the Editors email addy?

He even manages to get an “I like cycling….but” into the article. Next week: Andrew Frankel: “I;m not a racist, but….who let all these darkies onto our roads?”

Neil the wheel speaks the truth..only the other day I saw a motoring writer being racist on the telly. These motoring writers are clearly all racists and should be made to stop writing until they get their house in order.

This must be link bait, no?

If it is – to what end? That site isn’t exactly dripping in advertising (or have I got a Premier Sub that I don’t remember buying?). You can write articles that troll an audience and generate friction to get the clicks that pay the rent, if you do thats only dismal but its not dumb. Being a writer who only, seemingly, reads other peoples other peoples link bait and regurgitates it to no practical end – thats a bit dumb.

Does anyone have the Editors email addy?

Hora – for you, I can do better than that, I’ll deliver your message as a singing telegram. I can’t sing, but I’m not going to let that stop me.

I got a reply to my tweet to the editor. The usual “it’s just one person’s view” rubbish.

And……gone.

That hole he shot in his foot must have bled too much, or the editor’s hands around his neck.

Oh dear…. 😀

Shame. A lot of thought had gone into those commments. Not all of them, but some of them.

They have a forum.

Linky.

<Mod edit – link fixed>

bad link (too many fwd slash). bad forum (moribund)

oh well, it was exciting while it lasted as unexpectedly opened up a can of worms that i feel really needs to be discussed with many motorists. this ‘cyclists in our way’ nonsense is literally a life or death attitude. I’m a driver also, and have gotten impatient with groups of bikers, or even inexperienced cyclists – I have to take a chill pill and remember that car does not equal God. Car use does have a tendency to make us impatient, I’m normally patient to a fault. But I never did what Andrew Wotshisname was calling ‘sensible’, and that’s drive faster than I can see/safely stop if meeting a slow or stationary person or other hazard over crests or bends.

All the comments I read on that last night were measured, fact-based and balanced.
To pull that article because of the volume of comments pointing out how factually wrong and harmful it was is just cowardice.
Write an incendiary, prejudiced piece, get hauled up for it – and rather than be the big man and apologise he justs hides it away. Coward.

tbh that’s all you need to know about the anti-cycling brigade

Edit: the forum appears to be shut too…

motorsport’s FB page with the same article has also been fired into space. What a shower.

Next time I’m going to save the site so they can’t just make it vanish.

I think we need to put the frighteners on that sort of mentality.

When the next one crops up we should send it to our MPs and ask them to intervene.

Once the dickheads realise their previous immunity for road murders has gone, they might get a bit more careful.

epicyclo: if you fancy trying out that tactic then you could start with this one:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/news-article-advocating-violence-against-cyclists-again

Next time I’m going to save the site so they can’t just make it vanish.

Or we could let Google do it.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LuEEx8x6gx4J:www.motorsportmagazine.com/road-cars/opinions/the-problem-with-cyclists/

For posterity just in case Google Cache fails:

>>

How many of you are familiar with these circumstances, or similar? You are on a fast country road, trying to enjoy your drive, despite all those militating factors life throws at you: traffic, pot-holes, the children on the back seat and so on.

For the avoidance of doubt you are not driving like Ronnie Peterson on qualifiers, oversteering everywhere at triple the speed limit, you’re driving sensibly, but enjoying all those aspects of driving available entirely legally to anyone with a shred of sensitivity and a half decent car: finding the natural line through each curve, making imperceptible gear changes, listening to the engine, noting the loads build in the suspension and reading the road through the feel of the steering.

You crest a hill at, say, 50mph, and discover two cyclists travelling at one tenth of your speed, side by side in the middle of the road, having a nice chat. They can or at least should be able to hear you approach but despite the clear and present danger to their continuing existence, they exhibit not even a desire to pull over, let alone any kind of duty. You are the maniac in the one tonne metal projectile, they are the poor, innocent keep fit enthusiasts doing their bit to save the planet.

They believe that if you hit them there’s not a court in the land that’s going to find them culpable for the appalling accident that will ensue. The fact damages may well be paid to their estate rather than themselves appears not to register. They know that when faced with a choice of slamming on the brakes and/or swerving around them, or running into the back of them, you’re going to do whatever you can to prevent an accident entirely of their creation.

And yet when once you’ve shed the speed or found the gap between them and the truck coming the other way, when you look in the mirror, you find yourself in receipt of a single digit, black gloved salute. You find this an unworthy reward for saving their life.

The right to the road

I like cycling. I believe cyclists have as much right to use the roads as cars, motorcycles, buses and trucks. I have no problem at all with those who stay in single file and, like the rest of us, use no more space than they need; and, to be fair, most do. But in a sizeable minority of cases there is something about climbing aboard a device fashioned from metal, rubber and carbon fibre that trips the survival instinct switch in their brain to the off position.

None of these people would dream of walking in the middle of a busy A-road any more than would you and I, but put him or her on a bicycle and despite the fact that on many hills they can manage no better than walking pace, it’s apparently absolutely fine.

The problems cyclists now present motorists are many and manifest. Drivers must be 17 years old, trained and insured before they can take to the road: cyclists, like horse riders, remain untroubled by such inconveniences. Moreover they wield their weakness as a strength, believing their vulnerability somehow confers upon them the right to the moral high ground and upon you the obligation to do anything to accommodate their perceived right to travel on any part of the road at any speed they see fit, regardless of the inconvenience and danger to others as a result.

Measures to deal specifically with the hazards presented by two such incompatible devices as bicycles and vehicles occupying the same stretches of road will surely come but because the explosion of interest in cycling is a recent thing, they’re not here yet. Locally there is one road which has a simple cycle lane painted along its edges and I can’t remember when I last had a problem on it. As a measure it is neither expensive nor draconian and, so far as I can see, it works.

More fundamentally however cyclists need to realise that while their pastime is to be encouraged for all the obvious reasons, it should not be seen as a postmodern alternative to going to the pub: essentially a social occasion with the added benefit of keeping fit. Until this education is complete, people who ride bicycles very slowly in the middle of busy roads will continue to lose their lives, and people who drive cars in a manner that in any other circumstances would be regarded as entirely sensible, will continue to be unfairly blamed.

Andrew Frankel
Senior Contributing Writer

After an inglorious stint in the City convinced him that he could handle cars better than he handled money, Andrew joined Autocar many years ago as a junior tester. Since then he has become one of the industry’s senior figures. Editor of Motor Sport for five years, he now runs our road test section.

The link on FB is still there (that linked to the same page which has been deleted), along with the comments on it.

what a bunch of cowardly shysters. If you can’t stand by it don’t print it.

Result !

Indeed – let’s not complain about the editor doing what we were encouraging him to do.

making imperceptible gear changes, listening to the engine, noting the loads build in the suspension

Never mind the stuff about cyclists, that bit at the start is enough to convince me he is a git.

Indeed – let’s not complain about the editor doing what we were encouraging him to do.

True. But it would be nice to know whether he felt it was a justified piece, but not worth the hassle, or whether he recognises in hindsight that it was an offensive, badly written crock of shite.

If the latter, he should amend the piece or apologise for it, rather than hitting a button and pretending it never existed.

Yeah I agree with you martin.

An article like that should stand and be apologised for – not just covertly swept away once it has done its job and brought in the increased web traffic.

A newspaper would have had to issue a retraction, you can’t unprint something.

A web page OTOH can be easily removed, leaving no trace that it ever existed.

Er. Oh.

Nice work Cougar.

Fair point.

It does appear the editor is a reasonably keen cyclist (not just somebody who claims to be one because they have a bike in the garage), so may have eventually seen the light – I had a fairly civil twitter exchange with him anyway where he admitted to disagreeing with some of the article.

‘Fairly civil’

😀

I had a fairly civil twitter exchange with him anyway where he admitted to disagreeing with some of the article.

Why publish it then? Isn’t his magazine supposed to be about “Motorsport”. I fail to see how the article was relevant to motor sport.

So according to a bbc chap, Top Gear is on its way out, clarkson is now being chased for his “n” comment, and also now by ofcom about the slope on the bridge comment, his wife is also supposed to be divorcing him.

HAH!

not sure if their justification for removing it has been published on here;

Well that’s not fair, I kept my comment perfectly in line with the manner of the article.

Admittedly it was rude and offensive.

Where was that published wwaswas?

Pretty sure it started as a torrent of abuse from the journo – the folk in the comments simply exercised their right to reply 😀

here;

https://twitter.com/Motor_Sport/status/464365608248033280

although Twitter seems to have taken up where the comment on the article left off…

I wouldn’t mind so much if there’d been a nod of the head in in the direction the abuse had been coming from, because it wasn’t from the cyclists….

What a bag of shoeshine. I’m certain he removed it because it was a dangerous, moronic and offensive article, as evidenced by comments from both sides. If the article hadn’t been *disappeared* and the comments had been moderated then there wouldn’t be such a spurious ‘explanation’.

My feeling is the many balanced comments I read(from motorists who are cyclists) gave a very clear hindsight hence the removal (damage limitation), and they haven’t the balls to admit that. Some of the anti-cyclist rants in the comments that they let through were appalling, yet they deleted any comments that had links to dangerous motoring.

Motorsport pulled it’s trousers back up right quick when it realised it had forgotten to put pants on whilst lacking in the testes department.

I expect Motorsport have received a lot of welcome traffic to their website as a result of this “faux pas”.
Objective met.