AFTER the summer highs with Tour de France and Olympic wins for Brits, cycling is in the limelight again, and not in a good way.

Cycling blogs are ablaze with criticism of last week’s BBC show The War on Britain’s Roads. In précis, it showed helmet-cam footage of crashes and near-misses between militant commuter cyclists and hyper-aggressive motorists.

The message was clear: cycling is a lethal activity and drivers are out to kill you. To ‘balance’ the story, the show featured a few bonkers cycle couriers literally racing across London. Breaking every rule in the book, putting their own and others’ safety at risk, they proved cyclists are malicious psychos. The show bore no relation to reality. Ian Austin MP, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Cycling Group, described it as “stupid, sensationalist, simplistic, irresponsible nonsense”.

The AA president Edmund King called the anti-cyclist element “absolute idiots”. Though Mr King is a car advocate, he also cycles a lot. In fact, 18 per cent of AA members nationally cycle and drive. Here in Oxfordshire, that percentage is higher, but this still doesn’t equate to road peace. Asked by the AA, “Which road users make you most angry when driving?” the responses were: 1) car drivers (45 per cent), 2) white van men (18 per cent) and 3) cyclists (13 per cent). Pedestrians bore the wrath of just one per cent of drivers.

As a pedestrian, it’s the excessive speed of cars and buses and trucks that scares me, as well as the number of drivers who you still see using mobile while they drive. Motor vehicles are a very real danger, killing 453 pedestrians in 2011 and causing serious injury to 5,454.

I see the occasional pavement cyclist and it annoys me a bit. A few close shaves have angered me, but they cannot compare in terms of danger with, say, a close call with a bus.

It is incredible is how many people rate pavement cycling as their number one priority for police action – above violent crime, burglary, and bad driving. What to do?

The obvious answer is: safer roads. You can completely understand cyclists trying to avoid gnarly sections by using the pavement, especially kids. So long as they do so at walking pace and with civility, there would be no problem, but there is always the odd idiot or two to spoil things. However, the problem is not selfish cyclists, but thoughtless people.

In the 1960s, older cycling friends tell me no one would have dreamt of cycling on a pavement. There was a sense of civic responsibility and in the rare event that anyone did, a police officer would fine them immediately.

It is telling to compare the stats. In the 1960s, there were few pavement cyclists and 8,000 deaths on the road every year – this is both vehicle occupants and those that vehicles kill. Remember that in the 1960s, there were fewer cars: just 100 billion vehicle miles in the UK.

In 2011, we drove over 300 billion vehicle miles. There was lots of pavement cycling but a quarter the number of road deaths: 1,901 in 2011. Now ask yourself if we want to get tougher on pavement cycling.