One of the more recent manifestations of the much-lamented moral decay of our society is the reckless cyclist. You must be familiar with examples of the type. You are walking along the pavement when out of the blue some cyclist whizzes past, almost taking your arm with him (or her). Or you are walking into a subway when suddenly from around a corner a cyclist comes speeding towards you, and you have to jump out of the way to keep yourself and your baggage in one piece. Or you are waiting at the traffic lights to cross a road. The lights change, the green man lights up to signify that itþs safe to cross, and then, as you are about to step off the kerb, some wretch on a bicycle goes tearing past, almost tearing your face off at the same time! You also see them zooming along footpaths in parks, and walkways in shopping areas, scattering pedestrians in all directions. I do not drive; but if my pedestrian experiences are anything to go by, cyclists must be a menace to motorists too.

Suppose it were legal to cycle on the pavement. Common sense and common decency would demand that the cyclist at least limit his/her speed, and that he/she should dismount and walk if there is a significant danger of running down defenceless pedestrians (women and children and all). However, the vice of the modern cyclist is not just a matter of a lack of consideration for others. For cycling on the pavement is illegal. The callous thugs have no respect even for the rules upon which civilised living depends!

Similarly, cycling through a red light is not just inconsiderate and dangerous: it is also breaking the law! Yet members of the cycling fraternity infringe such laws, not only with insouciance, but also with impunity. That the police should turn a blind eye to this is all the more alarming given the apparent omnipresence of this species of menace.

Over the past couple of years it has been my misfortune to encounter innumerable members of this despicable species. I have so far been lucky enough to escape serious injury at their hands - or wheels - but only by the skin of my teeth! So what, if anything, can we do about them?

Nowadays, the customary first response to a problem - any problem - is to say that the government should do something. And what should the government do? Well, normally, according to the received wisdom, the government should ban something. But what could the government ban in this particular case? Cycling on the pavement, through red lights, into pedestrians, etc. are already banned; but that doesnþt stop the selfish, anti-social oafs from doing these things. The next step in the customary logic would be to say that bicycles should be banned. I can even picture Michael Howard exultantly announcing this to the next Tory Party Conference! But that, perhaps, is sufficient reason to dismiss the proposal as daft and pernicious.

Another customary strategy for dealing with a problem is to look for its þroot causeþ. This, I think, may be more promising. I began by saying that the reckless cyclist is one aspect of a more general deterioration in standards of behaviour. Now, it is commonly accepted, at least among libertarians, that the þroot causeþ of this moral decline is the welfare state, or more generally, the high-taxing, high- spending state and the rent-seeking þwar of all against allþ that it encourages.

It may be some confirmation of this that the emergence and spread of the reprobate cyclist has been coterminous with the growth of state hand-outs to cyclists in the form of large chunks of our tax money being spent on special cycle lanes in roads (or instead of roads), cycle paths beside pavements, and other cyclist-friendly provisions. So perhaps we are doomed to suffer the widespread menace on two wheels until we can properly roll back the frontiers of the state. That, unfortunately, is a long-term and perhaps even impossible task. Is there anything we can do in the short term?

One thing we could do is to persuade these ingrates to take up motoring. That should make our walks a lot safer, since even these miscreants would surely be unlikely to drive cars along the pavements or through red lights at pedestrian crossings, if only because the police would actually prosecute such transgressions. But how do we persuade them to take to the car? Personally, I do not know any cyclists: I like to think that I cultivate the friendship of a much better class of person. But that means that the gentle influence that one can exert upon friends is of no avail here.

How about a public appeal to their humanity? I think that would fall on deaf ears. The chances are that the cyclist is an eco-friendly people-hater. Indeed, that might be what inspires him/her to such excesses of vicious behaviour.

Perhaps we could offer incentives? For example, at the extreme, we could buy cars for them. But that would be no good because of the moral hazard. It would only encourage people to take up cycling - and perhaps even to take up menacing cycling - in order to gain a free car.

How about disincentives? What could we do to penalise people for cycling? In the face of the aforementioned tax- funded incentives to cycle, our disincentives would have to be pretty drastic. Perhaps we should carry broomsticks about with us to shove between the spokes of their front wheels as they pedal by. That should teach them what it is like to be on the receiving end for a change. If they got that treatment often enough, they would surely come to appreciate their responsibilities and buy a car. The trouble is that it would mean us resorting to just the kind of uncivilised behaviour that we get from the cyclist and that we wish to eradicate.

But we shall have to think of some way of controlling this menace - if only to ward off the spectre of Michael Howard launching yet another authoritarian attack on our dwindling rights and liberties!