The blog

Automobile Magazine’s 1902 claim about bicycle stopping distances debunked by modern automotive expert

by carltonreid / on October 13, 2014 /

In 1902, Automobile Magazine carried out tests on the average stopping distances of road-going vehicles. It was stated that a motor car could stop in 31 feet, a hansom cab could stop in 43 feet but that a bicycle would […]

Dear Department for Transport: please don’t use the term “push bike,” thanks

by carltonreid / on April 20, 2014 /

Dear Department for Transport Thanks ever so much for the “extra funding” for cycling schemes in the latest round of the Local Sustainable Transport Fund. However, the term “push bike” is offensive and has been since 1903. Use of such […]

When juries weren’t packed with motorists

by carltonreid / on February 20, 2014 /

Could’ve been peace in the Middle East if only they’d built the Great Arab Cycleway in 1901

by carltonreid / on December 19, 2013 /

In the July 1900 US edition of the mass-circulation Pearson’s Magazine, journalist W.L. Alden wrote of a grandiose plan to construct a long-distance “asphalt cycle track” between Damascus and a Red Sea port, possibly Aqaba. “An enterprising American engineer…proposes to […]

“The bicycle will be extinct within the decade.” P.J. O’Rourke, 1987

by carltonreid / on November 27, 2013 /

My (very) forthcoming book has a long, detailed article about the cycling back-stories behind a great many automobile brands, including GMC, Ford, Land Rover and 77 others. I’m including a quote from libertarian American satirist P.J. O’Rourke. He’s not a […]

Sempé’s brilliant cartoon strip about class, congestion, cars and bicycles

by carltonreid / on October 17, 2013 /

Jean-Jacques Sempé – France’s most celebrated cartoonist – likes bicycles, perhaps because one of his first jobs was delivering wine by bicycle through the rolling hills of the Gironde. He has drawn them many times, most famously for The New […]

Before he became a press baron the founder of the Daily Mail was editor of a bicycle magazine

by carltonreid / on October 14, 2013 /

1930s press baron Lord Beaverbrook said Alfred Harmsworth was “the greatest figure who ever strode down Fleet Street.” It might have been more accurate if Beaverbrook had said “rode down Fleet Street” for Harmsworth was an enthusiastic cyclist, familiar with […]

“Is that a bicycle pump in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?”

by carltonreid / on September 13, 2013 /

1893 advert, Good Roads magazine, published by the League of American Wheelmen. Trivia: Hollywood’s bawdy actress Mae West is popularly thought to have said “Is that a gun [or pistol] in your pocket, or are you just glad to see […]

A cycle touring US President kickstarted the paving of America

by carltonreid / on September 11, 2013 /

History books have long said that Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States during and three years after the First World War, was a huge fan of the automobile. “No more ardent motorist ever occupied the White House […]

AA was founded as ‘speed trap’ foiler; spotters were cyclists

by carltonreid / on September 06, 2013 /

Today we tend to think of the Automobile Association as a roadside rescue organisation with a penchant for pro-car PR. However, for much of its early history it was a radical campaigning organisation, a thorn in the side of the […]

"How cyclists were the first to push for good roads & became the pioneers of motoring." ROADS WERE NOT BUILT FOR CARS is a print, Kindle, iPad and free e-book about roads history.

The coming of the railways in the 1830s killed off the stage-coach trade; almost all rural roads reverted to low-level local use. Cyclists were the first group in a generation to use roads and were the first to push for high-quality sealed surfaces and were the first to lobby for national funding and leadership for roads. They were also the first promoters of motoring; the first motoring journalists had first been cycling journalists; and there was a transfer of technology from cycling to motoring without which cars as we know them wouldn't exist! Nearly seventy car marques – including Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC – had bicycling beginnings.

'Roads Were Not Built for Cars' is a history book, focussing on a time when cyclists had political clout, in Britain and especially in America. The book researches the Roads Improvement Association - a lobbying group created by the Cyclists' Touring Club in 1886 - and the Good Roads movement organised by the League of American Wheelmen in the same period.

The book was published in a Kickstarter limited-edition in September 2014. Island Press of Washington, D.C. published a revised second-edition in April 2015.

Thanks to research grants and advertising support, text-only PDF chapters from the book are slowly being made available for free to read online. The free distribution model is being used in order to get the book seen by as many eyes as possible. The paid-for publications are richly illustrated; the free versions have had the pix stripped out and replaced with adverts.

To get notification of the paid-for and free publications subscribe to the (infrequent) email newsletter. See below or in the sidebars.

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MOTORISTS' FRONT OF JUDEA: Apart from the pneumatic tyre, ball bearings, differential gears, roads, motoring, car ads, and aviation, what have the cyclists ever done for us?

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