Like all drivers, I have no problem whatsoever with cyclists as long as they stay in their place – the pavement. I realise, by the way, that this is not a reasonable view. But since when was the car a place where reason held sway? We all, to some extent, think of the road as our own, and we are all quite badly wrong about that.

The driver’s problem with cyclists is that so many of them commit the cardinal highway sin: slowing you down.

Also, drivers are solemnly – and in some areas, legally – bound by the terms of the Highway Code. The cyclist, on the other hand, generally feels at liberty to treat the code as a kind of Argos catalogue – something to browse through and pick and choose from.

Traffic lights, for instance, take on, for the cyclist, the status of an inflatable children’s paddling pool, temptingly reduced to half-price. You might just go for it, you might not.

It is possible, of course, that jealousy is somewhere beneath all this. The recklessly self-endangering cyclist is almost certainly fitter than you, better adjusted socially and more closely in tune with nature.

Nothing more profoundly sums up the impotence of the modern urban driver, inching along at 6mph, than being overtaken by a bicycle. No wonder drivers are in a froth about them most of the time.