RHA magazine on cyclists

Don't get too upset about this stuff. It's generally good to bring views like this out into the open so that you can actually discuss them, although of course it's bad if people then don't actually want to discuss them.

Views like this are held widely throughout the population, in line with common immoral prejudices like 'might makes right', but also because there's been a pretty successful campaign for decades to make people feel that, if they cycle, they put themselves in harm's way and would precipitate their own death or injury, and that they should therefore stop, or that at least all sorts of obstacles should be placed in people's way so that they stop cycling. This has led to the sort of twisted 'caring' but patronising attitude you get in the article. 'Don't make me hurt you because of your own selfishness of setting yourself up as a future victim of abuse', or something like that.

People like him are victims of the prevailing conditions; forming this sort of opinion on the basis of very little knowledge and essentially under enormous stress of responsibility (people deny or try to push away responsibility onto others if they can't deal with it). It's a particular specialism of this country, although of course to some degree you find similar attitudes elsewhere. (A friend of mine was once hit by a driver who came out of a side street. He claimed in his defence that in his country the smaller vehicle had to give way to the larger vehicle.)

Anyway, you have to address his claims head-on instead of just trying to deny them and deal with the fact that such attitudes are widely held. People are generally open to persuasion, unless there's a serious underlying personal problem, but if you open the discussion by insulting them, you'll get nowhere. (You'll also find that a lot of lorry drivers, obviously, don't hold these views at all.)