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That middle article link chimed with me when I read it yesterday. I noticed a few times recently drivers doing this shooing gesture as I wait to cross the road at a junction. Only started seeing this in the last few years. Like a gesture you would do to an irritating wasp, rather than open-hand offer saying "you are safe to cross". It's kind of sad, I think a lot of motorists fell into the Top Gear / Daily Mail lazy anti-bicycle rhetoric. There is a lot of anger on the roads. The 'new dawn' of cycling popularity post-2012 fell flat pretty quickly. A cynic might say that an ebike future might be more about the e than the bike. We have to be constantly consuming these days. Regular bikes are dangerous because they are cheap, self-empowering, healthy and offer freedom.
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Squaredisk
The Guardian now has a string of articles about people giving up on cycling.
I noticed myself that nobody is really cycling, there are some pinch points in the city were you see cyclists in larger groups during peak times but that are just the few ones from all over London that get compressed into a small area. On my way in the morning from Woolwich up to Deptford there is almost nobody around compared to car traffic.
Same with the shopping area in Charlton, grid lock on the roads, rammed car parks and empty cycle racks and that's with immaculate access for cycling and walking from the east and west completely separated from cars.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/01/number-of-people-cycling-in-england-falls-a-year-after-2bn-plan
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/sep/01/i-will-never-ride-a-bike-again-why-people-are-giving-up-on-cycling
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/03/cycling-dangerous-children-pandemic-closed-lanes-tacks-road