Irrational: Cyclophobia in Mallorca

As is tradition at this time of the year, arguments about cyclists are starting. One says arguments; they are little more than someone going off on one, citing a particular incident and then condemning all cycle-kind as a consequence (or in reverse, i.e. the whole of car/taxi/van/lorry/bus-driver-kind being branded as devils incarnate or even devils in cars).

I was once a cyclophobe. Or rather, I was once only too glad to take the rise out of cyclists, as with a description that dates back to January 2007 of supermarkets being alive with the sound of cyclists' foot furniture - a horse-hoof, coconut-shell karaoke heading for the bananas. But since then, I have had a cycling epiphany. The ghosts of cycling past, present and future visited me in a dream, and I awoke with a broad smile and went in search of cyclists in order to bestow upon them gifts of goodwill.

And so there should be goodwill. Cyclists mean money. To all the naysayers who would have it that cyclists do only buy bananas and rarely patronise hostelries, I say you are quite wrong. I have witnessed with my own eyes entire platoons of cyclists demolishing pannier-loads of charcoaled meat at one sitting, washed down with helmet-fulls of foaming German lager.

Cyclophobia can attach itself to the seemingly most unexpected of people. Matthew Parris's infamous piano-wire stretched across roads to decapitate cyclists was strange not just because of its murderous desire but also because Parris is the sort of chap you would believe not to be a cyclophobe. Enthusiasms that he has, such as for Catalonia and the Conservative Party, mark him out as being slightly eccentric, rather like Boris Johnson, a Tory two-wheeling advocate. But sorry, sorry, there I go, forgetting my epiphany and implying that cyclists are eccentric, when of course they aren't. Well, not all of them anyway.

Another Conservative eccentric, the British Prime Minister, wants there to be greater safety for cyclists, and it was this that provoked a phone-in to Nicky Campbell on Five Live, one which proved that cyclophobia is more of a disorder in the UK than it is among users of Mallorcan roads who are other than cyclists (or skaters or runners or lunatics on those trike things or even pedestrians).

To the ranks of the celebrity cyclophobe and thus joining Matthew Parris can be added that all-Australian ocker Shane Warne. The leg-spinner fired off a flipper on Twitter, having flipped when a cyclist punched his car, and called for cyclists to ride in single file, have number plates and pay road tax. He didn't say anything about banning cyclists for taking diuretics or having had a hair transplant, but Warney may have had a point.

Put plates on a bike and if a cyclist goes through a red light ... . Hang on, not if a cyclist goes through a red light, but when a cyclist goes through a red light, and the nearest driver could take a photo with a Smartphone and upload it to a dedicated Tráfico website. Except of course the driver would then be penalised for having used a mobile.

Number plates probably aren't much of a solution. Bikes are bikes, they don't have wide bumpers onto which clearly visible plates can be mounted. Nevertheless, revengeful cyclophobes would doubtless favour some form of identification or tracking. Perhaps this is it. All cyclists should be electronically tagged. Jump a red, veer into the centre of the road, go the wrong way down a road and a vast GPS system floating in space over Mallorca would immediately clock them.

Should anything like this be necessary, though? Why can't drivers and cyclists live side by side together in perfect road-use harmony? The reasons why not, one supposes, are an irrational primeval territorialism and another instinctive human trait passed down from cavemen, that of objecting when someone seems to be taking the piss.

This is what it all boils down to, but it doesn't matter. Or only occasionally does it matter, if there is real danger involved. So, a cyclist jumps a red and a driver doesn't. Who cares? I don't, that's for sure. Though I was finally convinced there was a God when a cyclist went through a red and Tráfico were at the very junction and pulled her over.

The cyclophobia season is back with us, as it will always be with us. Hopefully, no cyclist feels inclined to punch a car, but to be honest if it were Shane Warne driving, it might be understandable. Even this, though, would be irrational.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.