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Havers said: "I absolutely hate cyclists. If they use the roads for free and they don’t have to pay any tax, they must obey the rules.
"The rules are that you stop at a red traffic light. I’m at one now and four cyclists just went through. They go up a one-way street the wrong way. And they’re aggressive if you get in their way. One just smacked the side of my car with his hand. It’s unbelievable behaviour."
Mr Havers did not go on to say all drivers are angels, never run red lights and are paragons of goodness in a world blighted by cyclists, but it sounded as though he was going that way. When a cyclist runs a red light he risks death, when a motorist runs a red light – an evil the cyclist haters never mention – he risks killing a vulnerable road user or, a worse crime in the eyes of some motorists, denting somebody else’s car.
Havers uses the classic "it’s my road, I paid for it" gibe. In fact, cyclists are on roads by right, motorists are there by licence. Road tax does not pay for roads. General taxation pays for roads. Tax-paying cyclists pay for the road they ride on and Havers gets stuck in traffic on. And there’s the likely reason why Havers and so many others hate cyclists: he can barely chug along at an average speed of 10mph through car-clogged London streets and has to pay £8 a day for the privilege while cyclists sail through the jams for free.
Naturally, law-breaking such as cyclists running red lights is not to be condoned but for an earlier and lengthy discourse on this subject go to this Observer piece from the weekend:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/…/0,,1788039,00.html
