When slight is right, the pedestrian is mighty

Ever had your thunder stolen? An interesting expression, whether you have or not. I have always taken it to be an allusion to some event in Norse mythology, Thor furious with Loki for purloining his elemental powers. But the authorities say not, tracing it back to a remark made by the unsuccessful 18th century dramatist John Dennis. Dennis, apparently, had invented a new way of simulating the sound of thunder for his latest unsuccessful play, Appius and Virginia, though what was wrong with the traditional sheet of aluminium I can't imagine. Soon after Appius and Virginia was taken off – the usual: bad reviews, no Americans in town, everybody only wanting to go to musicals – Dennis was watching a performance of Macbeth when he heard his thunder machine in operation. "That is my thunder, by God," he cried to whoever was sitting next to him. "The villains will play my thunder, but not my play."

"Shush!" said a person – probably Alexander Pope – in the row behind.

Believe that if you like. Myself, I'm always suspicious of anecdotes that rely on 18th century writers saying "by God". And since they were all wits in those days, isn't it likely that the whole point of Dennis's explosion of displeasure was its witty, mock-heroic allusion to Loki's having purloined Thor's powers?

Anyway, all this by way of preface to the villains having stolen my thunder, by God, in the matter of cyclists. Everywhere you looked last week, commentators and critics fulminating against bicycles, the people who ride them, the odious expressions of self-righteousness on their faces, the even more odious clothes they wear to mow down the innocent, and their all-round humanitarian and aesthetical offence. The justification for this explosion of bile was the publication, or the leaked publication, of a European Commission document arguing that motorists were ipso facto responsible for whatever befell the cyclist. You ride a bike, you go up to a motorist, you punch him on the nose, he pays you damages. That's the gist of it. So it's not altogether surprising that every crypto-cyclophobe in the country should suddenly come roaring out of the closet. But some of us, regardless of any EU document, have been steadily and tirelessly arguing against the bicycle for years, with little expectation of agreement or reward. Is not a cyclist responsible for the barrel load of grief in my novel Who's Sorry Now?? And will I not still be here, gentle reader, a footsoldier in an unfashionable cause, quietly pushing for the death-penalty for cyclists, when all these sensationalist Johnny-come-latelies – or should that be Johnnies-come-lately? – have moved on to excoriating mothers with pushchairs or toddlers on three-wheelers?

Whatever comes of the EU document – and much of the speculation is no doubt fantastical (higher insurance premiums, the death of the car, the closure of our highways, civil war, etc etc) – it only enunciates a principle that is already tacitly accepted by the high-minded everywhere, to wit the blamelessness, whatever the circumstances, of whichever person is currently perceived by liberal society to be the underdog. "Whoever is responsible," the document says, "cyclists usually suffer more."

Here, in a nutshell, the ethos of our times – the more shocking for the flagrancy with which it owns up to itself: "Whoever is responsible." Like a rocker switch of blame, or worse, a shrug of jurisprudential incuriosity. He who suffers more is the innocent party by simple virtue of his suffering. Slight is right. As for any causal connections between the sufferer's sufferings and his actions, forget them. The question of responsibility is now off the table.

It is by this logic that a person who fills his face with hamburgers feels entitled to sue the hamburger. Just as it is through fear of this logic that the playing of conkers in school playgrounds is now under threat, unless all parties sign a legal disclaimer before any conkering gets under way, indemnifying the headmaster, the school, the local education authority and the horse chestnut tree.

To more deadly effect, it is by this logic that we read half the conflicts in our world, exonerating the suffering however much the suffering are at fault, thereby fetishising victimhood and contributing to its murderous cult.

But, to return to the graver question of bicycles, if it is the case that suffering outweighs responsibility, and that the weaker form of transport can never be deemed to be a danger to the stronger, must that not put the pedestrian, to mix the metaphor, in the box seat? Cyclist punches motorist, motorist to blame. Ergo, pedestrian punches cyclist, cyclist to blame.

Do you not see what possibilities have thus opened up for us, the strollers, the loiterers, the idlers, we children of Baudelaire, lovers of city clouds and crowds, wallowers in the universal ecstasy of everything except cyclists? Nothing now to stop us striking back. Here he comes, in his colours of hateful complacency, shouting "Ding, ding!" as he shoots the lights, or "Out of my way!", or more often something far more foul. So now here we come, too, with our umbrella handles out or our mugs of piping hot coffee or our Uzi semi-automatic mini sub-machine guns at the ready, and if we are lucky enough to unseat the brute, can we not plead our deeper level of suffering, "whoever was responsible"?

Such violence of emotion may surprise cyclists who think their only enemy is the motorist. But just as they feel threatened by the car, so do we feel hectored by the bike. See the car as venomously racist and the cyclist as sanctimoniously anti-racist, if that will help. One doesn't want to die under the wheels of either if one can avoid it. But for most people, living in unexceptional circumstances, the sanctimonious present the greater nuisance. Get hit by a car and you probably won't live to tell the tale. Get hit by a bike and there's a fair chance you'll make it to your feet. The trouble is it's the bike that keeps stealing the motor car's thunder.