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Agree.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
"Vonny Moyes: Let's face it - cycling has an image problem"
(117 posts)-
Posted 8 years ago #
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"Anyone who can write "We need mums collecting the kids on bikes" in 2016 is clearly a total tool, in any case."
And unobservant. I'd say it's 50/50 of kids collection.
Posted 8 years ago # -
I wouldn't read too much into the hi-viz jacketed hordes at PoP. The wind was freezing and rain looked likely, I imagine most folk just chucked on their usual cycling jacket. Most cyclists I see wear a helmet - no reason why most wouldn't wear one to PoP, they have to get there on the usual roads.
Why can't cycle jackets and helmets be the norm for Edinburgh cyclists? Our cycle culture - our cycle chic. No reason why Edinburgh/Scottish cyclists should ape the dress sense of Dutch or Danish cyclists. We have different road conditions and topogrophy to deal with, so we generally choose different clothes. Neither is better or worse - simply different. Or is this another of those commands from the cycling elite that I seem to be unaware of...
Posted 8 years ago # -
@Morningsider - (sinister voice) - only those in the cycling elite know of the cycling elite.
Hold up a Clydesdale £100 bank note to the light and you will see the watermark of the bicycle wheel...
Posted 8 years ago # -
"I imagine most folk just chucked on their usual cycling jacket."
...
"Why can't cycle jackets and helmets be the norm for Edinburgh cyclists? Our cycle culture - our cycle chic."
Indeed. It might well be going that way.
Which may or may not en/dis courage others.
"Most cyclists I see wear a helmet - no reason why most wouldn't wear one to PoP, they have to get there on the usual roads."
Ah.
I suspect you see more 'commuters' than 'rest of the day' types.
I think hivis/helmets remains the dress of choice for going to work (for whatever reasons).
Perhaps in a better infrastructure/driver world that would persist - or not.
There has generally been a 'cycle campaigning assumption' that 'normal clothes is the best indicator of cycling becoming normal'. Maybe that is no longer true - people wear cycle clothes for practical or inclusion reasons(?)
Posted 8 years ago # -
Now I think I'm seeing more people at commuting times in non-specialist clothes (or non-specialist clothes + helmet).
Posted 8 years ago # -
I wear my work clothes under a viz jacket and helmet.
I wear smart woollen trousers in the winter. Advantage - if wool gets wet it dries quickly and doesn't cling.
Dress and 40 denier tights when I've cast a clout. Tights also dry quickly.
I got bored with the faff of changing at work. I don't cycle fast so don't build up a sweat.
It's pretty much how my pedestrian colleagues come in. They wear trainers and change. They discard their outer coats and scarves.
However my commute is short.
Posted 8 years ago # -
"
Vonny Moyes (@vonny_bravo)
25/04/2016, 2:36 pm
We're very much a cycling family. Wish it was easier for us all here.http://pic.twitter.com/wRvbHDmm1l
"
Posted 8 years ago # -
Why can't cycle jackets and helmets be the norm for Edinburgh cyclists? Our cycle culture - our cycle chic. No reason why Edinburgh/Scottish cyclists should ape the dress sense of Dutch or Danish cyclists. We have different road conditions and topogrophy to deal with, so we generally choose different clothes. Neither is better or worse - simply different.
I think the point really is that a mode with special clothing requirements is unlikely to become ubiquitous for practical reasons.
Imagine you were in town and thought about jumping into a taxi / bus but you could only do that if you had your taxi-specific jacket and helmet with you.
Or more likely, you're at home and want to wear certain jacket / shoes to go out to dinner but you now have to manage an extra set of shoes, jacket and helmet too (plus re-make your hair on arrival).
It's possible to imagine relatively high modal share where people have this stuff to deal with, but not true ubiquity (sp?)
Posted 8 years ago # -
Do mountain-clambering and hill-walking outfitters have quite the same preponderance of blue/yellow in their weather-coping garb as do cycle-clothing shops? If anything I'd expect the most popular colour to be red, for good visibility amongst predominantly green vegetation.
Some news media image editors may have an image-of-cycling problem, when photographs of peletons of racing cyclists in cycle-racing costumes accompany articles not predominantly about cycle-racing. To be fair to some of them there are the other types of image they also sometimes use, such as the "cyclists at huge junction with a bus/lorry looming behind them, probably in London" or the "grinning cyclist family pootling along sunny towpath/off-road-route". There's probably already a Tumblr set up for each, along the lines of "Nick Clegg looking sad" or "women laughing alone with salad". The Guardian's combination of bagpipes-and-racing-cyclist for Sally's article last week will probably win some sort of news media image-editing award for most incisive combination of lazy visual shorthand.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Dave - there are no clothing requirements for cycling, simply clothing choices. I don't think a waterproof jacket for poor weather days is much of a push in Scotland. Helmet wearing is a choice - although any cyclist concerned about their hair is liable to sort it after a ride - helmet or not.
Generally, people on a bike are making return journeys and can dress appropriately for both legs. Most commuters have somewhere to keep a spare jacket. If you are going out to a fancy dinner where dress is really important then you can leave the bike at home.
If you are wearing cycle specific shoes then I think you are beyond worrying about any of this.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Hillwalkers, in my experience, are more likely to complain about the ubiquity of black (if male) or pink/baby blue/purple (if female) waterproof jackets...
Posted 8 years ago # -
Now I think I'm seeing more people at commuting times in non-specialist clothes (or non-specialist clothes + helmet).
That's my sense as well, fimm. Not in the majority yet, but enough to make me think they're on the rise.
I think the point really is that a mode with special clothing requirements is unlikely to become ubiquitous for practical reasons.
Yes, a lawyer friend expressed this to me in the context of the Roseburn to Leith cycletrack - his clients could not accept him turning up in his cycling gear, so he wouldn't be using his bike to get to meetings. He didn't seem to get that the cycletrack would enable him to do just that, but perhaps he'd be convinced of that over time.
Posted 8 years ago # -
"Imagine you were in town and thought about jumping into a taxi / bus but you could only do that if you had your taxi-specific jacket and helmet with you."
Actually car driving has changed the way people dress. For example, in the 1960s/70s the short "car coat" replaced the longer overcoat for men, they stopped wearing hats all the time (maybe a 'sporty' flat cap to go with the driving gloves), etc.
Now with climate controlled cars, folk just drive in the equivalent of pyjamas. You can always tell the parents at our primary school who have arrived by car on an inclement day: no jacket, hat nor scarf: dressed for the lounge rather than the windswept playground...
Posted 8 years ago # -
"women laughing alone with salad"
http://womenlaughingalonewithsalad.tumblr.com
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/108367934753470201/
Also:
The Play (probably coming to the Fringe sometime)
My fave:
Posted 8 years ago # -
@wingpig
Worst picture - article by Sally H in the Guardian about cycling in Scotland.https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1139209136124497&id=169099526468801
Fast cyclist; highlands; lassie in kilt blowing bagpipes.
Now that will get the infrastructure built in the central belt...
Posted 8 years ago # -
mmmm....my kids get really stressed when we insist they wear rain trousers because it takes them longer to get changed at school and (at least in p1) they get rewards for their table if they change quickly. Seems to reward kids who come inappropriately dressed (and often by car), rather than those who come prepared for the elements.
Posted 8 years ago # -
@SRD, unintended consequences of administrative convenience?
Posted 8 years ago # -
@Rosie I think it is also a set of racist stereotypes. And they wonder why they are selling fewer papers in Scotland.
Posted 8 years ago # -
SRD, you need to train them up so that they are the fastest kids on the block at getting rain trousers off? Wish I was faster at that. Also always have dilemma with shoes. Should I take them off too when changing out of my shorts or just try to batter them through my long trousers and risk the whole thing getting stuck and causing more delays. Some meetings I chance it and stay in my shorts.
The water repellent technology must be tricking down to kids trousers soon? I have a pair of shorts that the rain beads on, well they need to go through a tumble dryer to improve this again but I do not have a tumble dryer.
Posted 8 years ago # -
@gembo @srd - For us there is a noticeable difference in commuting times between winter and summer directly related to the number of layers they have on top of their uniforms.
Oh and this morning, my youngest decided to announce half way into the ride that she only had 1 glove and prompted a rearward search only for her to then announce that she had left it at home. This is a not a problem we have in summer.
Posted 8 years ago # -
they stopped wearing hats all the time
I've seen that blamed on JFK, who made going hatless "cool".
Posted 8 years ago # -
@hankchief, try the old gloves connected to each other by bit of string threaded up one arm of coat and down the other, I do not know why that didn't catch on
Posted 8 years ago # -
It isn't just children. I think people in our society are very insulated from the weather. See number of comments about "Ooh isn't it cold/wet/whatever" when it isn't, really. If everyone who sits in my office came in in a big coat and wanted to hang it up, there are not nearly enough coat hooks for them all.
Posted 8 years ago # -
@PS, reckon it predates JFK, he was just a man of his time.
'Editor of The Tailor and Cutter magazine John Taylor, writing in 1966, said: "The riding mac was the equivalent in the nineteen twenties and thirties of the car coat of the nineteen fifties and sixties. If a riding mac was worn there was the suggestion that it had been bought for a specific purpose. The wearer probably owned a hack and therefore was not a member of the hoi polloi. For similar reasons today, however submerged in the psyches of their owners the reasons may lie, there are far more car coats in male wardrobes than there are cars in garages." '
Posted 8 years ago # -
Just worth saying that I purposely left my cycling helmet and yellow stuff at home for PoP 2016. I only did this having taken part last year - knowing to expect a ride segregated from impatient drivers, and wanting to contribute to the image of normal people using bikes (vs 'cyclists'). I wonder if next year more of us could make a point of removing helmets? Perhaps we could make it obvious that we were carrying them... Not sure the message would come across, but even if it only was a talking point...
Posted 8 years ago # -
The problem with hi vis in the POP photos is that it does its job and stands out, so it tends to look more prevalent than it really was. If you look carefully at the POP photos you see a sea of bright jackets but more of the hillwalking kind than the cycling kind (I confess I haven't done an actual count though). This year we've got an extra block of yellow at the front because of the Talking Tandems t-shirts.
Helmets are also unduly prominent - partly because they make everyone's head look bigger, and partly because we've got so many kids at POP and they tend to be at the front and even people who don't wear helmets religiously themselves tend to put them on their kids.
We could try and encourage funky headgear or fancy dress as a way of drawing the eye away from the bright yellow - but TBH if anyone looks at the pictures of POP and goes 'meh, too much lycra' then they've spectacularly missed the point and I don't really care what they think. Certainly, we're not about to start instituting a dress code. Everyone who comes to POP is welcome and they can wear what they like to it.
Posted 8 years ago # -
I think that motorcycling is also restricted in growth due to all the kit you have to carry about. Then again scooter use is going up as people feel they can ride in civies.
Cycling a bike with a chain guard up to 6 miles at av speed of 10mph shouldn't require special clothing. (Assuming you don't race up Dublin St).
We're having the SEStran Commuter Challenge this year as first event in EdFoC. LB Bikes is organising it again (so I'm told).
Extra kudos for commuting in on a non 'sportive' 3 speed bike in non specialist clothing on shorter routes.Also need more of a gender balance (ethnic balance would be good too}. All the bike times were just too fast last year. We know bikes are fast but city road users are used to av city speeds of 12mph in rush hour. Race snakes doing 16mph+ in urban mode are just too fast and need to add in change times.
Pm me if you are interested - even if you are an Audaxer called Dave.
http://www.edfoc.org.uk/events/event/sestran-commuter-challenge-2016/Posted 8 years ago # -
Dave - there are no clothing requirements for cycling, simply clothing choices.
But is that the answer people on the street would give, if surveyed (in some neutral form of the question, "what clothing do you need to cycle to work")?
Clothing isn't much of a determiner of our own journeys but that's easy to say once you're riding hundreds of miles a week.
We typically only use bikes for commuting and otherwise drive, mainly because it's a lot more sociable to chat side-by-side in a car than do some kind of uncomfortable stilted-conversation-while-watching-out-that-you-don't-annoy-the-driver-behind-you type of journeys by bike. Segregated routes would probably reduce our car use a lot for this reason.
Posted 8 years ago # -
it's a lot more sociable to chat side-by-side in a car than do some kind of uncomfortable stilted-conversation-while-watching-out-that-you-don't-annoy-the-driver-behind-you
Yes, which is why street planners with a clue will design cycle paths specifically so that people can ride two abreast and chat to each other.
Posted 8 years ago #
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