Segregation – once a dirty word to me as cycle campaigner – now seems the only way that Oxford can go.

The mantra used to be “make all the roads safe enough for all”. But given the public’s insatiable appetite for driving and accidents involving cyclists, I am in the segregation camp. Three cyclists have been killed so far this year in Oxfordshire and many more injured, often seriously. Two have been knocked off in the past fortnight alone on Magdalen Bridge/High Street, one by a bus near The Plain and the other by a car at the other end, near Longwall Street. Segregation, like the protected lanes on Weirs Lane/Donnington Bridge, could prevent conflicts like these.

It is incredible that there aren’t more nasty accidents along narrow, fast, seething, furrowed High Street. As a confident cyclist doing 20mph I take the middle of the lane, as I know where the carriageway is deformed and ploughed-up. But I have no idea how slower kerb-hugging cyclists manage to survive it.

The council should be ashamed of the dangerous state of the road here. It must cause no end of near misses as hapless cyclists are forced to swerve. What’s really brought the dangers home is cycling with my toddler. I should be able to cycle anywhere in Oxford with her on my bike, but Cowley Road and Magdalen Bridge prevent me. I regularly take the long detour via Marston Road and the cycle track across the meadow to the Science Area. It doubles the journey time but it’s worth it to avoid Cowley Road, and The Plain, where a car knocked me over while making an illegal left turn.

We must have a new kind of hybrid lane for cyclists in the city’s busiest thoroughfares or we will continue to see cyclist casualties and deaths. And remember – these are only the ones brave enough to run the gauntlet of The Plain and Magdalen Bridge.

We need a new breed of segregated lane for cyclists, just as is being proposed for London and nationally as part of the Space for Cycling campaign: ctc.org.uk/campaign/space-for-cycling.

The county council is going to spend over £800,000 on making The Plain safer for cyclists. That this is on the table at all is fabulous of course, but the plans offer no segregation or measures that would encourage novices, or experienced riders like me with fragile and precious passengers, to use the roundabout. Instead, the plans rely on road-narrowing and carriageway colours to slow traffic. This is not enough.

Cyclox is advocating a number of no-additional-cost amendments to the proposals. You can view the summary at tinyurl.com/CycloxPlain. I’d go even further with the segregation myself, but I think Cyclox’s ideas really improve the council’s plans. We must not let The Plain become a £1m white elephant like Cowley Road.