Daily Telegraph: Cyclists drive us to the 10th circle of hell

If Dante was to be reincarnated in Sydney today, he’d add another chapter to his Inferno based purely on his first exposure to the traffic in this Godforsaken metropolis. There’s no shortage of torments to choose from in this 10th circle of hell - the dysfunctional tunnels, motorways that gridlock in the event of someone sneezing, the perpetual inability of Sydney drivers to indicate.

But it would take Dante’s particular eye for the fiendish to portray the torment inflicted daily on urban drivers by the unlicensed, uninsured, irresponsible and often ridiculously dressed lunatic fringe within the bicycle riding community.

Clad like mad parrots, they’re the pedalling prima donnas who demand the right to occupy a transit lane at peak hour, causing buses full of commuters to crawl and cars to make lane-lurching manoeuvres.

The worst of them revel in the sort of anti-social antics that would have a P-plater put in chokey.

Take the most recent civil-action-waiting-to-happen we encountered.

This far from atypical lycra loony deliberately rode in the centre of the inner city road, clearly delighted in the disruption he caused peak hour traffic.

Moreover, the excitable two-wheeler vigorously one-finger-saluted any motorist who attempted to pass him.

Most surreal, though, were his shouts of “Read the road rules!” at all cars in the vicinity.

This from someone who not very subconsciously courts an encounter with a car and - if skittled - would sue and would very likely win. And why?

Because despite contributing nothing by way of fees or taxes to the upkeep of our roads, he’s a member of a supposedly oppressed minority.

All vehicle owners, however, are deemed guilty simply by virtue of the fact that lousy public transport forces them to drive.

The opprobrium reserved for young drivers, who the RTA are content to cut loose on the road with no thought to teaching them to drive, might be more aptly reserved for the erratic and borderline psychotic cyclists you see every day.