Why cycles should be on the road

It was already 9 o’clock.  I should have been at my school by that time, but my auto had come late.  I had therefore given a piece of my mind to the automan who in turn had let off steam on the auto which was trying its best get up steam.  The contraption held its breath and raced along, turned on to Convent Road and rattled past Bombay Studio when with a screech of tyres followed by violent shaking it came to a grinding halt.  Flying into a towering rage, the automan got off and screamed out a volley of four-letter words with all his might.  In front of him stood a cyclist who, by crossing the road all of a sudden without signalling his intention, had caused that scene.  A motor cyclist would have shouted back, whether he was in the right or wrong.  But the cyclist only stood silent like a sacrificial victim until the auto driver exhausted all his linguistic resources.  Then he climbed on to his “two-wheeler” (Doesn’t a bicycle have two wheels, after all?) and pedalled away. 

Motorists screaming at cyclists is a common sight on Indian roads where there are too many bicycles even in this day and age.  Here is a common enough experience in my own city, Vijayawada: You are placidly driving along the relatively safe and convenient Bundar Road when, all of a sudden, near the Municipal Stadium or the NTR statue, a cyclist races across the road and raises your blood pressure.  You are never your original self during the rest of your journey.

Cyclists are notorious for taking turns as they like, for racing across the road without signalling their intentions, for weaving in and out of traffic, and for squeezing through the narrow gap between the fenders of two cars waiting at a traffic signal.  If only motorists had things their way, they wouldn’t have cycles at all on the road!

But are cyclists to be sympathized with or condemned?  An ordinary cyclist cannot afford to have even a rear-view mirror, let alone blinking indicators, on his bicycle.  With both hands gripping the handles of the bicycle, he crosses the road without being able to signal his intention in traffic.  He is thus neither crazy nor a speed-lover but just helpless.  The traffic density of the modern road forces him to take risks.

Motorists seem to think that the road entirely belongs to them – a wrong idea which gains strength by the acquiescence of cyclists and pedestrians.  Someone has suggested in a newspaper article that cyclists in India may think of an association for themselves (like the League of American Bicyclists) to protect their rights.  They may name it after Dr Dunlop to whom they owe their modern bicycle with pneumatic tyres.

There is at least one reason for which we should be grateful to cyclists: their “two-wheelers” don’t pollute!  What do you think will happen if bicycles are taken off the road?  I guess most of the cyclists will somehow become motor cyclists, and that will be terrible.  In enlightened self-interest, therefore, we should be sympathetic towards cyclists and keep them on the road.