Bikes and Buses

London's roads are not lightly driven. Danger lurks around every corner, a plethora of hazards waiting to ensnare the unwary and bring them crashing to a halt in a blaze of light and crushed metal.

But surely there are some amongst us stout enough to brave the dangers, to drive where mere mortals fear to steer, to put themselves in the front line of urban travel for the benefit of their fellow Londoners? Yes! There they are - the stalwart drivers of London's myriad bus companies, rescuing us from the terrors of the roads and carrying passengers to their destination safely and quickly in both comfort and style.

But let nobody imagine that life on the mean streets of London is free from risk. Bus drivers face a terrible danger from which they protect us on a daily basis; cyclists.

Cyclists are, by far, the most dangerous road user that a bus can encounter. Small, soft, slow and nimble, cycles float around buses like flies around a corpse, pushing their way through narrow gaps, taking up space on the road and generally antagonising the poor bus drivers. Like a flock of crows around a hawk, cyclists mob buses and force their drivers to take defensive action against in the face of persistent attacks.

Let me give you an example. If you sit at the front of the upper deck of a London bus you will regularly see cyclists deliberately and aggressively slow down when they realise there is a bus following them (don't try to blame hills, road conditions, weather, fatigue or other traffic - everyone knows that these things don't affect London's psychotic cyclists). The tactic is always the same; cyclists, individually or in groups, intimidate drivers of double decker buses by slowing so that their back wheel is mere inches from the front bumper of the bus. Often they will swerve randomly across the road (ignore obviously false explanations like "I was turning right" or "I needed to avoid a parked car") to further inconvenience the heroic driver of the ten-ton transport behemoth.

Cyclists often flock together to better disrupt the activities of their enemies. Wearing bright colours (for example a terrifying neon yellow high-visibility jacket), carrying numerous flashing LED lights to distract tired drivers or sporting ridiculous headgear to advertise their presence, cyclists will take whatever means necessary to disguise their true purpose (traffic disruption) and to attract like-minded sexual partners so that they can spawn ever-larger crowds of bus-hating fanatics.

The solution, and it is the only one available to address this appalling state of affairs, is to stop cyclists from using the public highways upon which they currently torment our bus drivers. On major roads they should instead be restricted to a dedicated network of cycle paths, leaving the bus lanes free from danger and allowing the esteemed bus drivers to proceed along their allocated route without fear of interference or aggravation from scores of brightly coloured, easily spotted, bus-fearing cyclists.