Another week, another dead cyclist. Sadly this is how it feels to be a cyclist in London right now, with three of us killed in as many weeks.

On Monday, 54-year-old Alan Neve was run down by a tipper truck at High Holborn, following two other recent fatalities in Lewisham and in Whitechapel.

With more deaths beginning to look an inevitability, cyclists are angry. A protest by 2,500 people on bikes on Tuesday was the second demonstration in a week appealing for “Space for Cycling”. In Tower Hill, Ann Kenrick, chair of the London Cycling Campaign, had just given a speech when she was told that her 15-year-old nephew was in hospital with a crushed pelvis having being knocked off his bike by a lorry in Clapham.

The dry summer months always bring out more cyclists; as the heat rises, so does the aggression. Barely a day passes at present without my seeing a taxi or car driver swearing or gesticulating angrily at a cyclist who is, more often than not, in the right.

Criticism is always levelled at cyclists for breaking road rules. While car drivers should probably first examine their own road behaviour, it’s true that there is no excuse for the cyclist who jumps a red light while ringing his or her bell and then ploughs through pedestrians who are legitimately using a crossing. I have often ridden up alongside such offenders and explained as much to them.

Yet while road planning continues to favour motor vehicles over bicycles there are often cases — including on the road layout partly responsible for the most recent death — where it would be safer for a cyclist to break a rule than to obey it.

As bloggers have highlighted, the point where Alan Neve died on High Holborn is the busy route that cyclists are forced to take where the parallel Theobalds Road becomes one way. Cyclists are forbidden from joining a bus lane that continues west against the flow of traffic and, for months, police have been ticketing cyclists who break this rule to avoid the danger of High Holborn. Apparently the lane is too narrow for buses to pass cyclists. Why this matters, since cyclists are quite often faster than buses, I don’t know.

Cyclists get to know their routes and the light phasing along them. If a lorry pulls up close behind me at a red light then when the road is clear I will make use of the few seconds between red and green to pull away moments early and get well ahead of the death trap at my rear.

I shouldn’t have to take these measures, and wouldn’t have to if there was proper space for cyclists. That is what London needs to encourage more people off crowded public transport or out of cars and on to this healthier and cleaner mode of transport. The idea that to bring in segregated cycle lanes or introduce light phasing that favours bikes wouldn’t work in London because of lack of space or high volumes of traffic is just nonsense.

It’s simply a matter of priorities. Assume that the greatest need is for motor traffic to flow freely through our streets and we will get nowhere. Put the bike first and suddenly it frees up a lot of options, and cars no longer have to get first refusal on space. Putting motorists first never does cyclists any favours — and much worse, it kills us.