Some of my best friends are cyclists. I have long listened with genuine sympathy to their tales of horror as, trying to weave their way through towns and cities, they become invisible to drivers of motor vehicles - especially very big ones - and have endless brushes with mutilation or death.

But when Katy Bourne, the police and crime commissioner for Sussex, said last week that she would like to see cyclists carrying some form of visible identification akin to a car numberplate, so that they could be tracked down for traffic offences, it struck a note.

There are such things as bad cyclists, and I seem to come across rather a lot of them.

The other day, during a lunchtime constitutional, I was crossing a busy road in London. Having been brought up on the Tufty Club - ‘look right, look left and look right again’ - I paused obediently at the edge of the kerb, waiting for the little red man on a traffic control to turn into a green one.

When he did, and the Number 9 bus had pulled up precisely at the crossing, I began my journey to the other side of the road. However, as I passed the front of the bus a high-velocity object came out from behind it and brushed in front of me, evaporating into the distance too quickly even for me to hurl abuse after it.

Whereas the bus driver realised he had to stop at the traffic light, the cyclist merely saw it as an opportunity to get ahead of every other vehicle. I wish I could say this was an isolated event, but it isn’t.

There are more cyclists on the road today than ever. More than a million people have taken to bikes in the past five years. And the more numerous they become, the more essential it is to control them.

Had I been six inches further forward, the bike would have hit me at about 30mph. I would be writing this from a hospital bed, if I was lucky: my attacker, riding at speed into a large quantity of Heffer, might have come off even worse.

Idea: Katy Bourne, the police and crime commissioner for Sussex, said she would like to see cyclists carrying some form of visible identification akin to a car numberplate. Above, a woman poses in a mocked-up photo

This is no laughing matter. Last year, a cyclist jumped a light and hit a nine-year old girl on a pedestrian crossing in Dorset.

If that wasn’t bad enough, he simply got back on his bike and left the unconscious girl, who had a fractured skull, on the road, and carried on.

The poor little girl got 14 days in intensive care and suffered serious vision and memory problems for long after the incident. The cyclist got an inadequate 12 months for GBH inflicted by ‘wanton and furious cycling’. Had he not given himself up the next day, he might never have been caught.

Indeed, Ms Bourne cited the disregard a large proportion of what the BBC would no doubt call ‘the cycling community’ has for traffic lights as the reason she wanted them to be properly identifiable.

The self-appointed spokesmen of the cycling community immediately rounded upon Ms Bourne, telling her that such schemes had been tried elsewhere and failed.

The cycling lobby was also enraged this summer when a car rental firm based at Heathrow Airport branded cyclists ‘a hazard’ in its online guide for overseas motorists.

Cycling politicians: In order to prove their right-on credentials as caring environmentalists, David Cameron (left) and Boris Johnson (right) have been keen to be photographed on two wheels whenever possible

The firm’s website crashed as the cyclists besieged it, while its office was bombarded with furious phone calls.

Sadly, the firm had simply spoken the truth. London cyclists, it said, can be ‘a bit of a hazard . . . they tend to ignore traffic lights and one-way streets, so please be careful you don’t hit them, cyclists become most indignant if you hit them, and legally, it is always the motorist’s fault’.

One might have thought that the RAC’s job was to defend motorists from reckless cyclists. But it has said Ms Bourne’s plan for bicycle numberplates is ‘impractical, bureaucratic and dangerous’, which strikes me as going a bit far. I might swallow the first two adjectives, but the danger posed by sticking a numberplate on a bike is beyond my comprehension.

Militant cyclists argue, correctly, that having numberplates on cars does not stop motorists jumping the lights, or texting at the wheel.

Indeed it does not. But they neglect to mention that when those delinquents do these things and are spotted by a camera or the police, retribution follows in a way that it usually does not for cyclists.

Dare I say it, there is a little bit of an arrogance about cyclists now. In this age of environmental and health zealotry, the fact that they don’t add to the world’s carbon footprint, they don’t use precious resources (apart from a bit of oil, for which they no doubt feel duly ashamed) and are personal crusaders against the obesity epidemic is supposed to make them just a bit morally superior to the rest of us.

Rules: When I was an undergraduate at Cambridge (above) 35 years ago, you weren’t allowed to have a bike unless it was marked with a serial number identifying you and your college

Note how, in order to prove their right-on credentials as caring environmentalists, David Cameron, George Osborne and, of course, Boris Johnson have all been keen to be photographed on two wheels whenever possible.

Despite not being remotely right-on I, too, own a bike. I have been known to potter around the lanes of north Essex on it when that once-a-year moment occurs when I feel I need some exercise, or when an exposure to a blast of fresh air would help dispel a hangover.

I must admit that I do not feel my moral character improves greatly the moment I am on its insanely uncomfortable saddle — it is as well that I have fathered all the children I want to — or, more to the point, that I am suddenly exempted from the Highway Code.

Others apparently do, however. Perhaps because, unlike me, they go through the ritual of spraying on Lycra before mounting their bikes, it makes them feel a breed apart from everyone else in their joint missions to get from A to B while saving the world. I don’t know.

I’m sure many cyclists deserve their pious reputation, and that many drivers are outrageously careless towards them. But just as the rogue element of Mr Toads needs to be reined in by identification, so too do rogue cyclists, whose ability to cause injury and misery is often as great, and yet goes routinely undetected and unpunished.

To do this is neither excessively bureaucratic nor unenforceable. When I was an undergraduate at Cambridge 35 years ago, you weren’t allowed to have a bike unless it was marked with a serial number identifying you and your college.

Tories on their bikes: The Prime Mininster (left) and George Osborne (right) cycle to the House of Commons

I am not aware that anyone suffered as a result of this, or that consequently we lived in mortal danger.

If, as some cycling extremists protest, a bike could only sustain a numberplate so small that it would be unreadable by a camera, then the answer is simple. In the interests of public safety — including the safety of the cyclist — don’t allow anyone on the road on a bike without wearing a high-visibility vest, on the back of which would be, in the manner of an association footballer, a number.

The cyclists want a government initiative to fund more cycle routes and better facilities. Well, let this be funded by registration fees paid when applying for your hi-viz vest. Every penny of profit could fund such improvements.

And as for enforcement — well, if anyone is on a bike on the road without their vest displaying their number, fine them instantly. If they don’t pay, confiscate their bike, and make it part of the overseas aid programme by sending it to a Third World country.

A ‘Bikes for Africa’ programme would make us all feel better, and do real good for mobility of labour in developing nations. Experiments in Uganda and Tanzania in the 1990s showed that possession of a bicycle can increase the income of a poor family by up to 35 per cent: a massive return on the investment.

Let’s have a level playing field, or rather a level road. If motorists must be accountable for the wrongs they do — and they must — then so must cyclists.