A few days ago we - that's me and the husband - took a cab to the station. Chat with the driver fell to the wrong of cyclists, and the misunderstanding of the road rules. So far as the rules of the road go, there seems to be one basic principle: when you are driving a car you hate bikes, when you are riding a bike you hate cars (and I guess walkers hate everyone). There is an obvious difference of viewpoint built in here. It wasn't until I started to drive a car (almost 20years after I had first rode a bike) that I actually realized that you could not see a cyclist at night without lights. In fact I now want to shout at late night cyclists without lights(like motortists once did at me): "You'll get killed, sunshine, I can't see you." The problem is that cyclists do ride headlong into danger. It's not just not having lights. It's biking on pavements (and so threatening to injure a load of innocent walkers in the process) and biking down one-way streets the wrong way. I admit that I do bike the wrong way down a one-way street sometimes. My feeble  defense is that I try always to do it as if I know I was doing wrong. That is slowly, with an apologetic look on the face, and ready to get off at any minute. I can't bear the guys  (usually, but not always it is guys) who do it as if they owned the place, and at high speed. So cyclists are not entirely innocent. But they are among the disadvantaged groups, because the bottom line is that a car or a lorry can kill a cyclist and not the other way around. When did the writer realize the danger for late night cyclists without lights?
Not until she became a driver herself. Not until she had driven a car for 20 years. After she was shouted at by a motorist. After she was once knocked down by a group of guys.