I maintain that, by a far majority the most unskilled lawbreaking users of the road...are cyclists. we really need to get our own house in order if we want to be treated with the respect we crave.
It seems we are a long way behind other countries in understanding this.
We argue that bad cycling doesn't cause injury's or damage but this is just wrong. Aside from this it sets appalling examples for new riders, hands out precedents, as a gift for those that need little excuse to form a poor impression and generally just spoils it for the rest of us.
I really want the authorities to clamp down on this crap riding.
I am not so sure. What is the percentage of drivers that regularly speed? The issue is that much of the law-breaking by motorists is deemed socially acceptable by many people, and many motorists. So therefore it gets overlooked. Whereas the law breaking by cyclists is a convenient tool to prod cyclists with when we get uppity about things.
There is also a law of diminishing returns here. Cycling, like walking, is a right on the highways, and as such will always have very variable levels of competence. By all means have awareness campaigns for cyclists, training days and so on (in the same way that pedestrians get taught and made aware). Also make sure the worst transgressions are dealt with. But without a major change to the cyclists relationship with road use, we have to accept that there will be variable competence out there, as there are pedestrians who are alert and others who wander around in a trance.
As a motorist I feel it is right for the bar of competence to be set higher than cyclists and pedestrians and for there to be more responsibility placed on the person trained to use a vehicle.
I view transgressions such as endemic speeding (my 20mph road is an utter joke, and kids play on the street whilst vans and cars break the limits to get to the next queue in the rat-run) as more dangerous - problems which won't be resolved whilst the common perception of these transgressions is that they are minor. And that is without going into the 13% of uninsured motorists in London.
Motorists treating cyclists with care so that they don't endanger them shouldn't be predicated on all cyclists becoming law-abiding beforehand. In the same way that motorists shouldn't assume it OK to harass and endanger pedestrians because some aren't attentive to roads.