On Good Friday the Mirror ran a story about David Cameron’s ride to work, apparently having followed him over three Wednesdays and seen a catalogue of illegal behaviour.

Needless to say the media wanted to hear the cyclists’ view and called CTC.  Director Kevin Mayne did a number of interviews on Friday and Saturday, however his view was almost directly opposed to the position of a number of cycling and road safety spokespeople.

Kevin explains his response

“I checked out the Mirror’s coverage in some detail and I was furious. After 3 days of trailing Cameron they ended up with just four photos that they said was either illegal or dangerous riding, plus some footage on line. I am not condoning illegal or dangerous cycling but this was plain daft.

I know most of that route, I use it regularly. In most of the photos he was doing exactly what we all do – he crossed a toucan on red because there were no cars coming, he moved to the front of the queue at traffic lights and the so called roundabout he went round the wrong way is a bollard in the Mall.

Going up a one way street the wrong way was the one really illegal act, but we have shown the Department for Transport on many occasions that much of Europe allows cyclists to go against the flow in designated one way streets. I took the attached picture in Germany recently.

CTC is not party political, so there is always a risk in leaping in to support someone as prominent as a party leader. But Cameron is being vilified for being an ordinary cyclist and as long as this is portrayed as some sort of deviant behaviour I believe cycling will never be a serious mainstream choice of transport in the eyes of politicians who feel a desperate need to conform.

I believe that’s what cyclists want from CTC – a body that speaks for real people who ride bikes.”

The Mirror story here

BBC coverage here