Independent

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No bike can beat a car, even in heavy traffic. You don’t have to drive far to see cyclist taking risks with their own lives and everyone else’s, too. Cyclists mounting pavements, knocking pedestrians over. Cyclists jumping red lights and then cursing motorists who have narrowly missed them. Cyclists weaving in and out of fast-moving, tightly packed traffic, seemingly daring cars to hit them. Cyclists trying to squeeze into gaps that don’t exist and scraping cars and vans. So far from cyclists being some timid, cowed minority, the Lycra-clad yobs on two wheels are the most nasty, foul-mouthed and aggressive maniacs on the road.

Yes, it is the cyclists who seem to think they own the road, even though they pay not a penny in road fund licence. Nor are they insured.

But really I’m thinking of the cyclists themselves. Whoever’s fault it is, if you’re injured the one thing you cannot say is that you’re “better off”. And they are very, very vulnerable. No one would think of letting pushbikes on to motorways, yet the conditions in busy city roads are scarcely less hazardous. For the cyclists’ own good, cycling in cities should be licensed, paid for and rationed. That way we’d all be better off.

I’d like to offer an apology. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a column that ridiculed Transport for London’s “you’re better off by bike” campaign and criticised the behaviour of some cyclists (for jumping red lights and so on). I said cycling on busy roads was dangerous. I thought cyclists ought to be insured for the admittedly extremely rare damage they do to cars, if they happened to scrape their bodywork, say. The solution, I argued, was for cyclists to be insured (compulsorily), licensed, and to be steered away from the busiest roads. There should be a small fee to help cover costs.

I clearly upset some reader-cyclists, and for that I’m sorry. The rest just thought I was a fool who ought to be in the Daily Mail …

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