I’ve lost count of the times I’ve nearly been killed by cyclists

Celia WaldenMon, May 11, 2026 at 5:21 PM UTC

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Benedict Cumberbatch was confronted by a cyclist last week over allegedly running red lights - SWNS

If you’ve watched the footage of Benedict Cumberbatch having a “road rage” row with a fellow cyclist, you’re probably as bemused as I am.

The argument took place at an intersection on St Pancras Road last Tuesday, but has only just been leaked to the news website, Talk to the Press.

Thanks to our everyday videographer, we can see a man in red chinos and some kind of mask-like facial covering shouting and gesticulating at the Doctor Strange star. Insisting he just witnessed Cumberbatch go “through a zebra crossing” and “three lights” – which the actor strongly denies – he then goes on to accuse him of “lying” and being “deluded”.

I have no idea who – if anyone – is in the wrong here. I find myself naturally prejudiced against Red Chino Man (purely because of his attire). But as a London pedestrian, I’m also tired of risking my life every time I cross the road – at a zebra crossing, you understand, and only when the little green man has naïvely told me that it’s safe. Because when it comes to roads, vehicles and, you know, avoiding untimely death, I’m a plodding little rule follower.

Not so for many of the city’s cyclists, who will behave with impunity when it comes to pedestrians for the simple and logical reason that they are (largely) exempt from punishment.

I hadn’t understood this until two years ago, when I wrote about the tragic death of 81-year-old Hilda Griffiths. In June 2022, the pensioner was knocked to the ground by a cyclist while walking her dog. But even though the cyclist was riding at speeds of up to 29mph in a 20-mph zone of Regent’s Park, he escaped without punishment. No specific speed limits existed for cyclists at the time, you see, so I say “escaped” because in the eyes of the law, he had done nothing wrong. “The idea that speeding cyclists can remain lawless”, I concluded, “is inconceivable”.

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The cyclist who killed 81-year-old Hilda Griffiths escaped prosecution after it was deemed that speed limits didn’t apply to bicycles

Two years on, the inconceivable has happened. Despite repeated debates around the subject of stricter regulation and speed limits, despite at least 335 pedestrians injured in collisions with cyclists in London in 2024 alone (according to the latest Transport for London survey in February) with two suffering fatal injuries and 99 serious injuries, there is still no blanket speed limit for cyclists in the capital – or elsewhere in the UK, for that matter.

Now, you could zero in on all the laws cyclists flout, rather than those that aren’t there to begin with. After all, they’re not allowed to mount the pavements, but they do, terrorising children and the elderly without incurring any penalties. (Have you ever seen a cyclist apprehended for doing this? I haven’t.)

As Red Chinos points out, they’re obviously not allowed to go through red lights either. Although in my experience 70-80 per cent of them do – again, without facing any consequences. But why do you think that is? There’s a sense of entitlement behind it, definitely, because cyclists have the moral high ground, because they’re saving the planet, one at a time. But far more important is the basic issue of momentum.

Momentum was used in a coroner’s court to explain the actions of the cyclist who knocked over Hilda Griffiths. Yes, his client did indeed see “an elderly woman” step into the road, confirmed the man’s lawyer, but at the speed he was riding at, he had “zero reaction time”. So with the best will in the world, the cyclist couldn’t have stopped in time.

Momentum was also the reason a great friend of mine will never be able to taste again. She was knocked over by a cyclist (in the US) as she walked across a zebra crossing back in 2021, suffering a traumatic brain injury when she hit her head on the kerb. She still has nightmares, she says, about the moment she locked eyes with the cyclist: the moment he weighed up whether he could be bothered to slow down and stop – and decided “nah”.

Of course the red-light flouters see those red lights, but unhampered by speed laws, most of them are going too fast to come to an easy stop. Don’t forget that many high-performance unmotorised bikes can still reach speeds of up to 40 mph – and when was the last time a car was able to drive that fast through London?

Anyone with elderly parents remains haunted by Hilda Griffiths’s story, but unless more stringent regulation is introduced and speed limits imposed, no pedestrians of any age will be safe. “Zero reaction time”: if all else fails, lawmakers need only think of those three words before doing the right thing.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”