Top Gear hits rock bottom

As we all know by now we have a cats and dogs problem on our roads, and while the behaviour of a subset of the cycling population may rankle the reality is that real solutions lie in changing the cultural behaviour of motorists.

If that sounds a bit one sided well, that's just the way I see it - cyclists in this country have always been at the mercy of the heavyweights on our roads.

But how are we to change minds when shows like Top Gear Australia - and its parent in the UK - continue to demonstrate the sheer malignancy of motoring culture on our transport landscape?

Top Gear is the poster child for bad motoring behaviour, focusing largely on 0-60km/h performance, and engaging in a range of dubious stunts to demonstrate how incredibly awesome it is to drive like a lunatic.

Its style and tone contribute nothing in terms of tempering the worst instincts of motorists. Its overarching dialogue only about placing motoring first in the minds of viewers to the exclusion of other road users.

When not glorifying motoring culture the show has form in taking cheap and gratuitous shots at the weak - that is, when they are not producing fiction about potentially planet-saving alternatives in the motoring world.Take, for example, Top Gear's line on electric cars. Casting aside any pretence of impartiality or rigour, it has set out to show that electric cars are useless. If the facts don't fit, it bends them until they do.

Top Gear's latest crime against society - this time right here in Australia - is to entrench in motorists' minds a set of tiresome cliches about cyclists, while themselves recklessly breaking the law to demonstrate a point.

Now you could say that this is just entertainment and the scenes are staged, after all they will have received permission to (safely) drive around like idiots. At least I hope they did.

But that's beside the point. I'm trying to figure out what kind of entertainment is it when the show targets a specific group of vulnerable road users for the low brow amusement of its viewers? Maybe they take their cues from Australia's Funniest Home Videos?

Television is a powerful medium for a reason, imagery is more powerful than the spoken word, so what you show, or stage, has an enormous impact. Wrong-headed and misinformed visual statements about particular road users are not a joke. People can get killed and maimed.

Maybe Top Gear should air a segment on our hard-working long-haul truckies driving 24-hours straight on nothing but blaring Tamworth Festival favourites, No-Doze and Jack Daniels and see what kind of reaction they receive from that community.

I saw the segment as designed to denigrate legal and legitimate road users and quite likely give licence to motorists to play fast and loose with the rights of cyclists to use the roads.

Ultimately, it was an irresponsible mockery and failed to advance the discourse surrounding our shared urban and transport spaces.

Follow Phil on Twitter: @Lycra_Lout