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@jsabine
As f_j says, google cache remembers, but only for the moment. Here's Mr Frankel's text in case anyone actually wants to read it.
I wouldn't.
The problem with cyclists
By Andrew Frankel on 6 May 2014 @Andrew_Frankel
How many of you are familiar with these circumstances, or similar? You are on a fast country road, trying to enjoy your drive, despite all those militating factors life throws at you: traffic, pot-holes, the children on the back seat and so on.
For the avoidance of doubt you are not driving like Ronnie Peterson on qualifiers, oversteering everywhere at triple the speed limit, you’re driving sensibly, but enjoying all those aspects of driving available entirely legally to anyone with a shred of sensitivity and a half decent car: finding the natural line through each curve, making imperceptible gear changes, listening to the engine, noting the loads build in the suspension and reading the road through the feel of the steering.
You crest a hill at, say, 50mph, and discover two cyclists travelling at one tenth of your speed, side by side in the middle of the road, having a nice chat. They can or at least should be able to hear you approach but despite the clear and present danger to their continuing existence, they exhibit not even a desire to pull over, let alone any kind of duty. You are the maniac in the one tonne metal projectile, they are the poor, innocent keep fit enthusiasts doing their bit to save the planet.
They believe that if you hit them there’s not a court in the land that’s going to find them culpable for the appalling accident that will ensue. The fact damages may well be paid to their estate rather than themselves appears not to register. They know that when faced with a choice of slamming on the brakes and/or swerving around them, or running into the back of them, you’re going to do whatever you can to prevent an accident entirely of their creation.
And yet when once you’ve shed the speed or found the gap between them and the truck coming the other way, when you look in the mirror, you find yourself in receipt of a single digit, black gloved salute. You find this an unworthy reward for saving their life.
I like cycling. I believe cyclists have as much right to use the roads as cars, motorcycles, buses and trucks. I have no problem at all with those who stay in single file and, like the rest of us, use no more space than they need; and, to be fair, most do. But in a sizeable minority of cases there is something about climbing aboard a device fashioned from metal, rubber and carbon fibre that trips the survival instinct switch in their brain to the off position.
None of these people would dream of walking in the middle of a busy A-road any more than would you and I, but put him or her on a bicycle and despite the fact that on many hills they can manage no better than walking pace, it’s apparently absolutely fine.
The problems cyclists now present motorists are many and manifest. Drivers must be 17 years old, trained and insured before they can take to the road: cyclists, like horse riders, remain untroubled by such inconveniences. Moreover they wield their weakness as a strength, believing their vulnerability somehow confers upon them the right to the moral high ground and upon you the obligation to do anything to accommodate their perceived right to travel on any part of the road at any speed they see fit, regardless of the inconvenience and danger to others as a result.
Measures to deal specifically with the hazards presented by two such incompatible devices as bicycles and vehicles occupying the same stretches of road will surely come but because the explosion of interest in cycling is a recent thing, they’re not here yet. Locally there is one road which has a simple cycle lane painted along its edges and I can’t remember when I last had a problem on it. As a measure it is neither expensive nor draconian and, so far as I can see, it works.
More fundamentally however cyclists need to realise that while their pastime is to be encouraged for all the obvious reasons, it should not be seen as a postmodern alternative to going to the pub: essentially a social occasion with the added benefit of keeping fit. Until this education is complete, people who ride bicycles very slowly in the middle of busy roads will continue to lose their lives, and people who drive cars in a manner that in any other circumstances would be regarded as entirely sensible, will continue to be unfairly blamed.