Red light jumpers have been the bane of the cycling community for so many years that they've got their own acronym - RLJ.

Like most cyclists, I find it very frustrating to be tarred with the same brush as RLJs. That's why it was great to see the police fining cyclists the other day for jumping red lights - about time, too. What's taken them so long?

The problem with RLJs in Oxford was that, until two weeks ago, little was ever done to stop them. It'll be very interesting to see how much difference the current police crackdown on RLJs will make, and for how long. If the police let cyclists know, as they do motorists, that they might get caught any time, any place, for RLJing, we'll have half the solution. The other half of the solution lies in the council's hands.

The police can tackle RLJs with their stick', but the council needs to provide the carrot' by adapting junction layouts so that cyclists do not feel the need to jump lights or to cycle on pavements. To find out how, read On Yer Bike in a fortnight. Cycle campaigners have wondered for ages how they could push the policing of cycling higher up the agenda nationally.

It's usually the need to tick boxes and fulfil Home Office targets that allows the police to focus on specific issues. Although there is no suggestion that Tsz Fok jumped a red light when he died at the junction of Parks Road and Broad Street, it must surely be more than a coincidence that for the first time in 15 years (to my knowledge), the police have had a blitz on RLJ cyclists. Better late than never, I suppose.

This box-ticking principle was evidenced by the police campaign against bicycle thieves last year, when cycle theft was causing a blip in the crime statistics.

Their efforts have not gone unrewarded - Oxford no longer appears at the top of the country's bike theft list. Halifax Home Insurance last month placed London, Cambridge, Bristol and York above Oxford in its list of cycle theft blackspots. Bike thefts rose by 10 per cent last year, according to the Halifax, with nearly 440,000 reported thefts. That's a pretty amazing number of stolen bikes - one every 71 seconds.

It's easy to condemn cyclists as crazed lawbreakers. But imagine what the roads would be like if the police didn't take driving misdemeanours as seriously as they do. If drivers thought they could get away with it, they would stop at red lights just as infrequently as cyclists.

Cars already park on pavements. Can you imagine where we'd find 'parked' cars if Control Plus weren't out there doing battle with these louts?

The driving-lobby notion that drivers can judge safe speeds and that speed limits create danger is drivel. Without enforcement, nearly all drivers would break the speed limit. So it isn't surprising that cyclists break the law when so little has been done to enforce it. The wonder is that so many OBEY the law. Let's hope the police can now find the time and funds to get as tough with pavement cyclists as they have with RLJs and cycle thieves.

In a cycling city like Oxford, it'll make all the difference.