OVER the summer I got in lots of rides around Otmoor and beyond. While I usually prefer the traffic-free benefits of mountain biking, I’ve found myself more and more riding on-road. Cleaning a mountain bike even after a dry-ish summertime ride can take as along as a short ride in itself, but I don’t know if it’s laziness with maintenance that’s led to more on-road-riding or if it’s just my age.

One thing’s for sure: contrary to what you’d expect, riding on the roads is a hell of a lot more dangerous than off-roading. Off-road you’re a lot likelier to tumble, but at relatively low speeds and you tend to pick yourself up, dust yourself down and carry on.

On-road, you can get yourself in a tangle or hit an unforeseen pothole and take yourself out – again, with a helmet on you’re not that likely to do yourself a life-threatening injury.

The difference, and the real danger, is the other idiots in the road. When a car overtakes you on a country road, it’s immediately obvious whether they are cyclists themselves (or have sufficient compassion to imagine being that cyclist they are overtaking) or whether they see the open road as chance to put their foot down.

Many cars in Oxfordshire are driven politely, and on average much more considerately than trucks and vans. But still way too many vehicles of all shapes and sizes don’t bother to wait behind you for a chance to pass, don’t pass you allowing enough space (even if nothing is coming head-on) and don’t slow down enough (or at all) when they overtake.

The result is a more dangerous roadscape in which cyclists are likeliest to come off worst. Overtaking a bike on a bend with a truck coming the other way, is a driver more likely to push a cyclist off the road than take a head-on hit with the truck?

Many’s the time I’ve been forced on to dangerous loose gravel or into a ditch by a motorist who has been going too fast and mis-judged a bend or the speed of approaching traffic.

I’ve not been injured badly, but all too often you read about cyclists who were not so lucky. You are so vulnerable out there on two wheels and too many drivers don’t realise or even seem to care. Though it is amazing how drivers do slow for horses, isn’t it?

The point is, on the winding lanes in areas like Otmoor or the Chilterns the statutory speed limit is way too high.

Drivers still seem to think their vehicle is capable of anything, and too many are palpably incapable of seeing the statutory speed limit as a LIMIT and not as a target, and fail to drive according to the actual conditions.

That’s why I was really pleased to hear the suggestion for a 40mph limit on narrower, smaller country roads. It’s easy from the comfort of a speeding cockpit to forget that cyclists are other people’s mums and dads, people’s brothers and sisters, real people who can get hurt if there’s the slightest driver error.

onyerbike@oxfordmail.co.uk