Order of Grunts and Gesticulations Ancient Brotherhood. Questionable Purpose.
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London has a new folk villain/folk hero: a cyclist who rides around with cameras, catches drivers on their phones, and submits the footage to police. VICE calls him a “camera-covered vigilante ‘traffic cop’.” London drivers call him several words that would get your comment section demonetised. The point is: he’s effective.
He’s reported 2,400+ drivers since 2019, and the reporting has reportedly helped generate penalty points, fines, and disqualifications. The “crime wave” he’s responding to is not niche. It’s the everyday modern sacrament: scrolling at the lights. And because this is 2026, even getting caught doing it is framed as persecution rather than… consequences.
Now drag that whole dynamic to Australia—swap London for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane—then add a fresh ingredient: the current spate of anti e-bike sentiment, plus the broader tradition of bike riders being treated as legitimate targets by drivers who mistake a steering wheel for social rank.
You can feel it in any thread where an e-bike is mentioned: the rider is always “out of control,” “dangerous,” “should be banned,” and “doesn’t pay rego,” while the driver is portrayed as a fragile victim forced into wrongdoing by the presence of… a person on a bicycle. Meanwhile, shared e-bike use is booming in Australian cities, and it’s happening alongside a familiar “moral panic” cycle—especially when the conversation blurs e-bikes, illegal high-powered e-mobility devices, and the occasional idiot doing motorway cosplay.
That blur matters, because it’s convenient. If you can bundle “normal e-bike commuter” together with “modified throttle rocket doing 60 in shorts,” you can justify any level of contempt, aggression, or “well they deserve it.” And contempt is the emotional fuel of road violence.
The road hierarchy nobody voted for
A lot of driver-on-cyclist abuse isn’t “about safety.” It’s about status.
Cars make people feel like they’re the default human. Everyone else becomes an obstacle: pedestrians as moving bollards, cyclists as insolence, and e-bike riders as insolence with a battery. Add time pressure, traffic stress, and a phone addiction you’re “definitely not using,” and you get the perfect cocktail for punishment fantasies.
This is not speculation. Australian research out of Queensland found large majorities of cyclists reported harassment from motorists, including the greatest hits: driving too close, shouting abuse, obscene gestures/sexual harassment. That’s not “a few bad apples.” That’s culture.
And culture is why the anti e-bike wave is so useful: it gives frustrated drivers a socially acceptable villain to focus on, instead of looking at the behaviours that actually kill people—speed, inattention, impatience, and yes, phones.
“Don’t use your phone” isn’t radical — it’s the bare minimum
One of the funniest parts of the London story is how many commenters arrive at the same “radical” solution: don’t use your phone while driving.
Australia already treats phone use as serious—at least on paper. As of June 2025 guidance compiled by the Australian Government’s Office of Road Safety, handheld mobile phone offences carry meaningful fines and demerits (e.g., NSW 5 points, QLD 4 points with a $1209 fine, with higher penalties for repeats in QLD).
So why does it still feel like cyclists and e-bike riders are the ones who need to “prove” they deserve to survive the commute?
Because enforcement is uneven, attention is finite, and the system quietly rewards whoever can do the most damage. A distracted driver in a two-tonne vehicle gets the benefit of the doubt. A rider gets the benefit of the horn.
The e-bike scapegoat problem
Here’s where we should be honest and mildly annoying: some e-bike riders do ride badly. Some are on non-compliant machines. Some ignore lights. Some ride footpaths like they’re late to a prophecy.
But the policy response can’t be: “Therefore, treat all e-bike riders as fair game.”
We already have enforcement campaigns targeting illegal and unsafe e-bike use (Victoria Police’s “Operation Consider,” for example, explicitly focuses on overpowered/non-compliant e-bikes and road-rule offences). The existence of these crackdowns is exactly why the “drivers vs e-bikes” hysteria is so revealing: it’s not really about whether rules exist. It’s about who gets to be presumed legitimate on the road.
And if we’re serious about road safety—actually serious, not “serious because I’m angry online”—then driver behaviour has to be treated with the same suspicion we currently reserve for the kid on the e-bike.
So yes: Australia should borrow the idea (with fewer punch-ons)
Australia doesn’t need a single celebrity vigilante cyclist. It needs a normalised mechanism for accountability that doesn’t rely on someone becoming a full-time target.
In practice, that means:
-
Make citizen video reporting easy, consistent, and transparent
If police accept dashcam footage, then the process should be widely known, simple, and not “good luck, mate.” (London’s case works because submission is routine and usable. ) -
Prioritise the violations that actually end lives
Phone use, close passes, dangerous turns, speeding through conflict points. Don’t waste the public’s attention on culture-war distractions. -
Separate “illegal electric motorbikes” from compliant e-bikes in public messaging
Enforcement campaigns already acknowledge confusion about what qualifies as an e-bike and what is effectively an electric motorcycle. Public discourse should stop pretending it can’t tell the difference. -
Treat harassment as a safety issue, not a personality quirk
If huge proportions of cyclists report harassment behaviours, that’s a road-safety problem in its own right, because it escalates risk and drives people off bikes entirely. -
Build infrastructure that removes the “negotiation”
The best way to reduce conflict is to stop forcing strangers to negotiate space at speed. Protected lanes, safer intersections, clearer separation where volumes demand it. This is boring. It also works.
The uncomfortable truth: the road isn’t “shared” unless drivers agree to share it
Australia’s transport culture still treats cycling as a hobby that wandered into traffic, rather than legitimate transport. E-bikes threaten that story because they make cycling practical for more people: older riders, parents, commuters, workers. You can see the numbers rising and the narrative panicking to keep up.
So yes—bring on the cameras, the reporting, the dull bureaucratic follow-through. Not because cyclists are saints, but because the consequences of driver error are catastrophic, and we’ve tolerated that asymmetry for too long.
The Order’s position (recorded in the minutes, stamped twice, and filed under “obvious but ignored”): if your freedom depends on everyone else being fragile, it’s not freedom. It’s entitlement with headlights.
