AS, you say that licensing motorists hasn’t stopped all stupid driving, so there’s no point in having it for cyclists. Why bother with it for drivers, either? And since insurance, training and tax haven’t stopped all stupid driving either, why bother with these?

Imagine London’s streets then! Imagine the freedom! Anyone can just buy a car and drive it away. Fantastic! No licence, no training, no insurance, no tax. Just buy the vehicle and off you go. Anyone! Any age! Vroom-vroom!

And imagine that half the drivers don’t care about the Highway Code, and quite a few of them don’t even know there IS a Highway Code. Plus, the police don’t bother much doing any policing. Lastly, imagine that many of these motorists believe that they are morally superior to everyone else and that this entitles them to do, well, whatever they like. Whatever they like! Like driving on the pavement! Fantastic! By the way, that’s not just “driving onto the pavement”, but “driving along it”. That would mainly be the motorbikes, I’m guessing. But fantastic either way! And the police won’t lift a finger!

What would we call this? The Casualty Road Show? The Boudicea Roller Derby?

What stops it from happening? Well, a number of reasons. Four are that road users need to be (i) licensed, (ii) taxed, (iii) trained and (iv) insured. That way there’s some chance of a road system that works reasonably well. Everyone pitches in and pays their dues, gets trained, etc to make the system work. Not perfectly, but reasonably well.

Would it be safer still if cyclists pitched in and did their share? Evidently. What makes cyclists so different from everyone else that they should freeload off everyone else’s efforts to make the thing work?