The Things You Look For..
I come from a village in Berkshire – a strange sort of mix of tracksuit bottoms, woods, and dog-walkers – in which our house lives in the bottom of an A road, with a speed limits that over the years been doggedly dragged down from de-restricted, to 50, and now to 40 mph. I live at the bottom of the hill before it broadens out to a flat strip, and when occasional pairs of ‘boy racers’ speed down the hill with their engines shrieking, pushing to overtake each other.
It’s not unusual, but when a neighbour awkwardly pulled the 90 degree turn into their driveway, it was peculiar to lean back, halfway through a bit of teenage HTML coding, to glance out of the window and see two cars impacting into each other and a wall, in a shattering bang that smacked the neighbourhood quiet as the third car went sailing past.
Part of me will forever be the accident rubber-necker. Mostly though as I dialed 999, I felt like a surreal prankster. Accidents on TV will forever be different to real life. I asked for police and ambulance, and tottered out almost too shy to ask if anyone was actually hurt. I think I peered into the wreckage and mumbled “Probably” to the nicest sounding lady on the phone.
It’s not uncommon, and when I moved to London over the summer there was something reassuring about cycling. It’s strange because the cycle lanes seem more reassuring – they were completely absent from the roads I cycled to school down, and Brighton implements them in a lax sort of way in which there’s a white line but with very little red coloured in. Having said that, I’ve never been nearly hit by so many times by idiotic drivers blindly swinging their doors into the roar, and weaved around so many buses, but it was always the cars with the engines that were shut off that terrified me most. And it’s always at the slowest speeds that I’ve come anywhere near an accident in my own car.
In London cars on the road seemed more aware – “it’s a metropolis, everyone active is engaged, busy and aware” the country kid in me explained. Somehow everyone on the move is on some sort of zen level (which is inexplicable given people’s ability to navigate around each other on say, Oxford Street) whilst stationary people are the most terrifying (If you watch the video below, this is a perfect example of ‘the things you look for’).
“You’re mad to cycle in London,” said a friend with an aversion to cycling in general.
“But it’s not scary,” I told her.
“And you don’t even wear a helmet?”
“Admittedly stupid,” said I, citing curly hair and vanity as an aversion, and the niceness of not needing to take a million locks, pumps, hats, and shiny belts on a journey out.
This all very loosely leads to the new TFL advert that’s been put out. What a horrible, cliche, unavoidable ending, I thought, as every TFL motorbike, car or cyclist advert must be. But ooh, I thought, what a delightfully true notion – and it reminded me of The Stoned Driving advert which seems to be on the other end of the stick, and focusing on our reactions to things we’re avoiding; ashamedly, the big issue man for one. Stare straight ahead.
