Readers, I fear you have judged me in haste. I have bought a bicycle, the first I have had in seven years. I wobbled back from Halford’s without breaking more than a sweat. It’s part of my fitness fervour, but my purchase decision also hinged on the fact that Transport for London decided to close Albert Bridge for 18 months, leaving me in the quandary of how best to reach the King’s Road. It’s been my material Mecca since I was a child, and now I have to drive all around the houses, literally, to reach it. For the record, I don’t have a Chelsea tractor, I drive a Prius, so there.

The solution was to go down to two wheels, as the bridge is still open to cycles. Four wheels bad, two wheels good. The sun is finally out, and pottering around Battersea on a bike is delightful. 

Sarah's shiny new bike

There is only one thing disturbing this delight. Or rather there 1.6 million things around the UK disturbing this delight - the potholes. While they may jigger your suspension in a car (in fact they are a potent argument for driving a 4×4 round city centres), leaving you clutching your teeth like Janet Street Porter on a PowerPlate, on a bike they may prove lethal. The vicious weather has created loads of new ones, and the existing ones have become positively cavernous.

I can’t find any actual statistics for the number of injuries, but when you Google ‘bicycle pothole injuries’ you get a company called potholeinjuryclaims, so there must be a fair few. I counted eleven annoying ones, and a great big one, in which you could have housed a family of elephants, on my three mile round trip to the shops this morning. Admittedly there were fewer on the Yummy Mummy Chelsea side of the river, than on the Slummy Mummy side where I live.

We are the pothole capital of Europe, if not the world. The subject often crops up on radio talk shows, and people ring in to explain why cheap, quick setting tarmac is unstable. I don’t care, I just want them sorted out. Potholes lead to seriously defensive cycling, and a tendency to look down at the patch of road in front, instead of the road ahead.  Apart from ruining the incomparable joy of taking my little fold up to the open road, it’s bloody dangerous.

Bikey needs a name. I was thinking of calling it Kulveer, after Boris’ psychotically pro-cycle side kick. Maybe you’ve got a better idea?

A report, by the University of Surrey, in today’s BMJ confirms that cycling is proportionally more dangerous than driving.  

Apparently in a collision between 70kg of flesh and bone, 9kg of flimsy metal, and two tonnes of people carrier, the cyclist will come off worse. I wonder how much that study cost, to make a statement of the bleeding obvious.

But whose fault are these accidents? In Guildford, it is possible to conceive of a Miss Marple style cyclist, in 1930’s garb, wearing a perky little hat, with a proper ‘Ladies bike’ with a basket on the front…unfortunately city centres are full of lycra-clad fascists. These fools seem to think that they have to ride their bikes like an eco-warrior in a Mad Max film.

In the space of one week, I have seen the following transgressions:

1. Cycling the wrong way down a one way street.

2. Cycling the wrong way down a cycle lane.

3. Not actually using a perfectly good cycle lane.

4. Cycling on the wrong side of a main road.

5. Cycling through a red light, then swearing at the motorist who had right of way.

6. Jumping on and off the pavement repeatedly, scattering pedestrians.

7. Cycling with the MP3 player on full blast.

8. Cycling and talking on the mobile (Professor of Vascular Surgery, you know who you are).

9. Gratuitously abusing motorists, or thumping their cars because you ‘disapprove’ of their gas guzzling nature - for which read, jealous that they can’t afford a new 4×4.

Feel free to add your own to the list. Worse still, half of these idiots don’t wear a helmet, and some operate the Darwinian principle of cycling carrying a helpless toddler as a potential additional victim.

It’s fine to go round taking the moral high ground about saving the planet, and getting fit, but when are cyclists going to start thinking about sensible road use?

Stuff like one way streets, and traffic lights are there for a reason, which is TO PROTECT YOU.

Cyclists are not licensed or insured, and therefore almost impossible to identify and prosecute for dangerous driving, unless they are sufficiently injured to hang around the scene. But, I suppose the victims of dangerous cycling, apart from a few old biddies who get knocked over on the pavement, are pretty much exclusively the cyclists themselves.

So wise up you two-wheeled warriors - cycle safety is for your own good, not mine.