Blood on the streets

Discussed at the highest level by experts:

Jason McCartney, a Tory MP, asked if there was "a war ongoing" between cars and bikes. Then his party colleague, Martin Vickers, asked – and he was being entirely serious – if the panel felt cyclists should "contribute" financially to the upkeep of roads.

Labour's Jim Dobbin launched into a series of fuzzy anecdotes about miscreant cyclists and scratched car paintwork before asking – again in seriousness – if a solution for our current cycle safety woes could be to force all cyclists to be registered, tested, and to put their bikes through a sort of MoT test.

Jack Semple, policy head of the Road Haulage Association, was left utterly unchallenged when he repeatedly singled out cyclist behaviour as the reason for them being killed by lorries.

Karen Lumley, reminisced fondly about her cycle proficiency test at school and wondered if there was anything similar these days.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2013/dec/03/transport-committee-cycling