There’s nothing more annoying than cycling up my narrow, steep road and having a motorist honk at me to get out of the way. On other inclines, I’d let it pass and either pull over if it was a long hill, or ignore the honker if it was short. But to be heckled and bullied by a lazy commuter on one’s own doorstep is intolerable.

Often, adding insult to injury, there’s hurled abuse as the car passes – “Get off the road!”

I feel sorrier for the schoolkids – this is a main route to a school. Drivers who should know much better seethe and hiss at the heels of children on bikes.

At the slightest opportunity, safe or not, they accelerate past, never bothering to wave a thanks and often forcing the children into the kerb or parked cars. It would be outrageous if adults pushed kids out of their way when walking along pavements. Quite why worse behaviour is acceptable in a car is a deep mystery.

I have never yet managed to get a word in edgeways, to remonstrate with a high-blood-pressure commuter, but when I do, this is what I’ll say: The fact is that roads were built for bicycles. Sure, roads actually started millennia ago as sheep tracks and salt traders’ trails. Then the Romans formalised the road networks across Europe with properly constructed highways. For centuries, the wealthy whizzed around on horseback and in carriages, on cobbled road surfaces. Hot on the heels of the carriages came the revolution that transformed our nation: the bicycle.

The first penny-farthings were dangerous and uncomfortable. Their riders – the equivalent of today’s BMW driver – continually fell off or ran over pedestrians.

Towards the end of the 19th century came the ‘safety’ bicycle. This newfangled machine had two wheels both the same size and pneumatic tyres. The basic design of modern bicycles has barely changed in over 100 years.

Until the end of the 19th century, travel was the preserve of the rich. Anything over a couple of miles – in other words, a walkable distance – had been impossible.

The bicycle gave working class people access to the countryside. Social mobility was born.

Hundreds of thousands of two-wheeled citizens formed cyclist groups – like the CTC (Cyclists’ Touring Club) which exists to this day – and demanded a more comfortable and safer ride. It was at this time that the roads were surfaced for cyclists’ comfort.

So the roads originally belonged to cycles until the motor car came along. Look at 80-year-old photographs of street scenes anywhere in the county and you’ll see dozens of bicycles propped up along the kerbs and few, if any, cars.

Since then we have shared the roads, with increasingly large weighting towards the car.

It is a myth that the road fund licence pays for all the roads. The true cost of motoring far exceeds the revenues from this tax and fuel duty. All UK taxpayers pay for the roads.

The suggestion that cyclists should pay for their use of the roads has been rejected by successive governments. The cost of providing roads for bicycles is so little as to render a cycle tax economically unviable to collect. This is because cycles don’t damage roads. Cars do.

Finally, a riposte to any idiot who thinks that he or she owns the road and that cyclists have no place on it: the majority of adult cyclists in Oxfordshire have cars as well. However, not all of us choose to drive them all the time.

Cyclists deserve more of the road than car drivers: they pay for but do not obsessively use the roads we share.