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Is being anti-cyclist similar to being racist? One man thinks so. He has made it his mission to stop people who say mean things about people who ride their bicycles on the road. He thinks that if he can stop anti-cyclist hate speech, he can preserve the safety of his fellow two-wheelers.
“It was on TikTok that I suddenly thought: ‘Wow, people think it’s socially acceptable to make [comments about harming cyclists]’,” Andrew Tierney, or @cybergibbons, told The Guardian. “A user made a comment about harming cyclists if they saw them adhering to one of the new Highway Code rules, and it got lots of likes.”
Tierney says that anti-cyclists use their real name, unlike other types of trolls so his first step is usually to contact the user and ask them to remove their comments. If that doesn’t work, he tags their family in the posts or flags them for removal.
Last year in the UK, a new law gave cyclists more space on the road and this infuriated many car drivers. Since then, threats against cyclists have increased and obviously this is a dangerous turf war.
“Some of the hate comments are supposed to be jokes, probably done for likes. But even if it is just a joke to the poster, people reading those comments might be encouraged to harm cyclists in real life.”
Point taken. There is no need for that. Share the road.
