Nine million bicycles

In Feb­ru­ary of this year, Muriel Casals, a 70 year old cul­tural ac­tivist, anti-Franco re­sister and MP in the cur­rent Cata­lan par­lia­ment, was knocked down and killed by a cy­clist in Barcelona. Last month the same thing hap­pened to the poet Jose­fina Peraire, aged 69. There are no ac­cu­rate fig­ures on how many peo­ple are run down by eco-war­riors every year, but the Sant Pau hos­pi­tal has stated that in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2015, it dealt with 9 pedes­tri­ans in­jured by cy­clists; the equally large and im­por­tant Hos­pi­tal Clínic says that it deals with be­tween 4 and 6 sim­i­lar cases every month. There are about 50 other hos­pi­tals in the city, so the total quar­terly fig­ures could well be close to a hun­dred. Which is odd, be­cause the City Coun­cil's by-laws clearly state that cy­clists must stick to bi­cy­cle lanes; and when there isn't one, they have to move onto the road, stay­ing as close as pos­si­ble to the pave­ment. If there is nei­ther a lane or road avail­able, they are al­lowed to use the pave­ment, al­ways giv­ing pedes­tri­ans right of way and never ex­ceed­ing a speed limit of 20km/hour. Flaw­lessly sen­si­ble though these by-laws might be, they re­frain from point­ing out that the above-men­tioned bi­cy­cle lanes aren't re­ally lanes at all, but white lines painted some­times on the road and usu­ally on the ac­tual pave­ments. (They're often placed smack next to metro exits and bus stops, which means emerg­ing pas­sen­gers can be clipped at ran­dom by cy­clists who are any­thing less than eagle-eyed).

This Mickey Mouse bi­cy­cle grid is, how­ever, only one source of the ac­ci­dents. The other is a siz­able mi­nor­ity of the cy­clists them­selves, who ride full tilt along pave­ments (steer­ing well clear of the bi­cy­cle lanes), ding­ing their bloody lit­tle bells at pedes­tri­ans who have to swerve out of their eco­log­i­cal way like star­tled geese; or they use the lanes, but ig­nore one-way sig­nals, shoot through traf­fic lights, and don't keep a look­out for pedes­tri­ans who have in­ad­ver­tently strayed over the white line (usu­ally older peo­ple, who aren't yet used to them). It's true of course, that cy­clists maim and kill less peo­ple than dri­vers or bik­ers, but un­like cy­clists, the lat­ter are sub­ject to var­i­ous con­trols: they have to have a li­cence and num­ber plates, take breathal­yser tests and make sure their ve­hi­cles pass an MOT test (here called an ITV); they also have to stay on as­phalt and off paving, whereas some cy­clists, no­tably tourists, seem to think that they can go on any sur­face they please, in any di­rec­tion, at any speed that takes their fancy. The sit­u­a­tion has now got so out of hand that to take a walk in Barcelona you have to keep your eyes per­ma­nently peeled, in­clud­ing the ones in the back of your head. Ru­mours have it that in No­vem­ber of this year the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice will, for the first time, start fin­ing cy­clists who in­fringe the rel­e­vant by-laws. Mean­while the City Coun­cil has just launched a new poster cam­paign whose main slo­gan is: 'Bi­cy­cles are healthy'. As they used to say: “One man's meat...”