Andrew Vine: Close shave that shows the need for mutual respect on road

But then it’s all a matter of luck whether an accident is little more than a nuisance, or something much worse. As I pulled myself together and checked over the bike, relief mingled with anger.

Relief that I’d got away lightly with only a sore leg, and anger at the driver who had clipped me with the wing mirror and sent me sprawling.

He – or she, I don’t know – hadn’t stopped, and I hadn’t even registered what sort of car it was, let alone got its licence number. It’s perfectly possible that the driver had not even realised they had nudged me, not hard enough to knock me off, but with just enough force to make me lose my balance.

I suppose it’s an everyday occurrence wherever people cycle. Like me, somebody picks themselves up, thanks passers-by for stopping to offer help, then looks ruefully down the road after the car and silently curses whoever is behind the wheel.

Cycling looms large in all our minds this summer. In a little over a fortnight, the spectacle and excitement of Le Grand Départ of the Tour de France will be with us for a couple of exhilarating days.

The brightly-painted bikes that have sprung up along the route are not only quirkily attractive additions to the landscape, but a reminder that once the race has whizzed through Yorkshire, one of its planned legacies is to get more people cycling.

That’s a laudable aim that will do children and adults alike nothing but good, both in terms of their health and perhaps eventually making our roads a bit less congested as people take to two wheels instead of four.

It’s 40-odd years since my father let go of the back of my saddle and I wobbled away, managing to stay upright on a bike for the first time without support, and I’ve been on them ever since, so I need no persuading that it’s a splendid idea to encourage more people to get pedalling.

But that’s only one side of the equation. Even before coming a cropper at the hands of a fellow road user, I’ve had a sense of mounting unease at being on a bike in traffic as the roads have become steadily more congested over the past few years.

It can be intimidating and sometimes downright frightening as vehicles come ever closer, with drivers seemingly oblivious of the need to give cyclists sufficient room on the road. Cycle lanes are fine, of course, but even though the network continues to grow we’re some way from being able to make a lot of journeys by bike in towns and cities without having to tackle traffic.

Other cyclists I know share my unease, and when a friend of ours was knocked off by a hit-and-run driver and seriously hurt, requiring surgery and a lengthy period of recuperation, we all shuddered in the knowledge that it could have
been any one of us in hospital instead 
of him.

It’s a particular worry for parents. I know couples torn between the benefits of cycling for keeping their children active as well as giving them a degree of independence and nagging concern for their safety on the road.

It surely cannot be a coincidence that the growing volume of traffic on the roads has gone hand-in-hand with the rising number of cyclists on the pavement, who are a menace.

If we are to get more people cycling, there needs to be a campaign aimed at motorists as well as those thinking of dusting down the bike that’s been stuck in the garage and going for a spin.

There’s a need for a culture change on the roads, to foster greater mutual understanding and respect between drivers and cyclists.

Thankfully, in our region we don’t often see the sort of angry altercations between cyclists and motorists that
are commonplace on the streets of London, where an atmosphere of hostility and even militancy over who has the greater right to the road seems to have developed.

But if we’re to get people out onto Yorkshire’s roads on their bikes – perhaps retracing the challenges of Le Grand Départ at their own pace, or going to work, school or shops – we need to make them safer for cyclists and lessen the sense of threat that so many people on two wheels feel.

That means targeting motorists, encouraging them to think a little bit harder about the other people sharing the road and not fretting over the few seconds extra it takes to ease past a cyclist safely instead of shaving so close that an accident is caused.

It’s a campaign worth undertaking, because getting more people onto their bikes would be good for all of us, and a worthy legacy of a magnificent sporting event.