People say they are too afraid not to drive - "I'm a lone woman"; "The roads are too dangerous"; "I'll die of cancer". So they get in their little buggies, shut themselves away from the outside world in bubbles of air conditioning, loud music and plush upholstery, then sit and fume in their own juices, unable to comprehend that all the traffic jams are their own bloody fault.

Fear. The more people who believe they are right to be afraid, then the more cars there will be on the road and the more likely they are to be right - because more cars mean more congestion, means shorter tempers and even narrower vision.

Fear means that we have suggestions to put up barriers between pavement and road. A culture of compensation and litigation means that we hear from people who would rather herd the lemmings in cages than let them learn the ways of Uncle Chuck.

I've had my fair share of near misses and scrapes. I've only once had a driver try to take me off deliberately, and I'm willing to bet that he wouldn't have been so tough or sure of himself if he'd had to get out of his car. The people at work admire me, for cycling 35 miles in all weathers on the A377. I get a real sense of personal worth from turning up on a wet, freezing cold day, covered in road grime and grinning like a loon, to comments like "You didn't cycle in today did you? On that road?" There are people here at work who for years have said that cycling is too dangerous, but 18 months after I got here, they're doing it, because I do it, and if I can do 35 miles a day on the A377 (which really isn't that bad) then they can do the 3 miles along Topsham Rd and the canal.

For all that I have lost all faith in humanity, I do not spend my life thinking that drivers are out there ready to kill any cyclist who gets in their way. Most of them are just people like you and me, who haven't the experience or breadth of vision to see that there is another way, and who are convinced by the cultural default setting of |transport| = car that the car is the way to travel. Most of them don't realise that they could cut out most of the stress in their lives by not driving all the time, and most of them are completely unaware that their stress levels go up as soon as they get behind the wheel. So do a cyclist's when he gets on his bike - but the physical effort is a natural response to stress, and is actually good for you. Most drivers will do their best to avoid you, and, to be fair, the last two times I have come into contact with car, it was me who hit the car, not the other way around, and both drivers were very understanding.

I really don't understand the attitude of those who talk about fear and how dangerous things are out there. They're really not. It's all about people, trying to get where they need to be, and some of them don't have the perceptive tools to realise that there is a better way. They're not going to develop those perceptive tools either, if we keep giving the impression that the roads are dangerous and we need to be kept in our own safe, little tunnels like chipmunks at a zoo.

I told our local Road Safety Bobby last year that one of the reasons I stayed on the road was to remind drivers that cyclists are out there and have a right to use the road as well. He agreed that this was a good thing, and I've never been stopped by police for not using the cycle path.

One more person on a bike = one fewer in cars. The more people we get out of their cars and onto bikes, the less hazardous the roads will be. That's the revolution I'm waiting for, and it's not going to happen if we live in fear.

Work to live. Live to ride. Ride to work.