Wheels within wheels

I have seen only one actual fight in a London cycle lane. It was at St George’s Circus, south of Blackfriars Bridge, on an afternoon late last summer. Two young women were attacking each other over a prone Boris bike, with a third attempting to pull them apart. It seems likely that one had ridden the bike into the other, but I did not interrupt them to check.

One learns quickly not to intervene in bike rage incidents. During my first year as a London cyclist, when I was less good at staying quiet, I was spat at, hit with an egg and, just the once, punched in the face by a man who had run uphill in front of me. Keep your head down and pedal, that’s the best thing.

London, you see, is a city officially in the throes of a bicycle revolution. Successive mayors have told us so, and so have traffic surveys: bike use on main roads here has doubled in the past ten years.