Bicycle porn and getting noticed

Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Bicycle, Cycling

So you think bicycles are a cheap and cheerful form of transport, and only weird Lycra-clad types who shave their legs spend more than £79.99 on a bike from the local motor factors?

The vast majority of the public who just cycle a bit at the weekends in the summer or on holiday with the children seem to represent cyclists, as well as those loutish students who jump red lights in their thousands, stop and kick an old lady, then spit on your windscreen as they cycle by. According to the UK press.

During another row with yet another driver attempting to ram me off the road, shouting the usual tripe about ‘I pay road taxes you don’t’ (so therefore implying that they can legitimately crush me to death) we began arguing about the cost of his wing mirror versus my bike (the cost of my life just doesn’t factor into a driver’s mind).

His rationale was (extrapolated) that he needs to leave as much space as possible passing cars (parked on his side) in order to avoid damaging his £150 wingmirror. By deduction this means my life and bicycle is worth less than £150…

What stunned this driver was the cost of my bike. A bottom of the scale 10 year old ‘real’ competition racing bike. Each wheel costing more than most people would pay for four family bikes. If I get knocked down by a thoughtless and dangerous driver, like most sporting cyclists, we bring private prosecutions against the driver using specialist solicitors. While the drivers’ defence bat the personal injury claims around, the one element that always shocks drivers and their insurers is the cost of the racing bike that they have so blithely driven over.

A typical category 2 road racer is likely to ride a machine costing around £3,000, and it is unlikely that this will be his/her only bike of that value. Time trial bikes cost even more. When one considers the engineering that goes into these machines these days, that is quite a bargain.

This month (September 2007) the specialist time trial bike company Lightweight released news of its 120 gramme carbon fibre derailleur which works on both Campagnolo and Shimano systems. This is a whopping 60 grammes lighter than the top Campagnolo rear ‘mech’ and represents a phenomenal piece of engineering for a bicycle. Yours for just £750.

So this got me wondering, if motorists realized how expensive certain bikes were, would they behave in the same way, just as some would drive a bit more carefully around a Ferrari than an old banger? After all, the human life doesn’t seem to factor into this, so maybe an expensive machine might?

Go on, you know you want to comment on this…