A few days ago, I had a run-in with a driver. Mr White Van Man believed that, as a cyclist, I should have been hugging the kerb — even though it was by a left-turn only lane and I was going straight on at the next junction.

I slowed his progress for perhaps seven seconds but that was enough time for him to get busy with his horn and colourful with his language. When I could move over safely, I did. He overtook me and then deliberately swerved into my path. I had to slam on my brakes to stop my bike smashing into his vehicle.

Such aggressive driving is not particularly common in London, despite our congested and often poorly laid-out streets. Although motorists, cyclists and pedestrians all fail to engage the brain sometimes, who wants to risk having blood on their hands? But it only takes one bad driver, one major misjudgment or one lapse in concentration to cause a catastrophe. We cyclists don’t have the protection of a steel cocoon — yet we’re expected to ride right next to the HGV and White Van Man with anger issues.

And the price put on a Lycra-ed life is scandalously low. Just look at two of the punishments doled out on drivers who have killed in recent years. In 2009, TV producer Eilidh Cairns died after being knocked down while cycling through Notting Hill. The man whose truck hit her, Joao Correia-Lopes, then failed an eyesight test — but he was handed just a £200 fine and given three points on his licence for driving with defective vision. Two years later, Correia-Lopes ran over and killed a 97-year-old pedestrian, an offence for which he was jailed.

In 2011, Rob Jefferies was killed in Dorset when he was hit from behind by Lee Cahill in broad daylight. Cahill, who already had a speeding conviction, was banned from driving for 18 months, ordered to pay £85 in costs and given 200 hours of community service and a 12-month community order. Those sound all the more pitiful next to the maximum possible punishments: 14 years in jail for causing death by dangerous driving and five years for death by careless driving.

Yesterday, the Department for Transport announced that a sentencing review will be launched next year. This is welcome, if overdue. But what is needed even more is a shift in attitudes. The authorities sometimes seem to believe that cycling deaths are inevitable in the capital, that getting on a bike is somehow playing Russian roulette with your own safety. And drivers shouldn’t need to kill or injure for the courts to hand out bans — would that White Van Man were already off the road.

For what he should realise is that a vehicle in the wrong hands is the most dangerous weapon most adults come across regularly. So if he happens to be reading: I’d get some therapy before getting back behind the wheel.

Violence rears its ugly head

At the weekend, I went to see Only God Forgives, Ryan Gosling’s latest film. It’s an oddly lazy work: writer and director Nicolas Winding Refn doesn’t seem to have bothered much with the script and Gosling doesn’t seem bothered about actually acting — he just pulls a wounded puppy face whenever he’s on screen. Only Kristin Scott Thomas, as a mafia mum monster with the fashion sense of Donatella Versace and the parenting habits of Jocasta, impresses.

Laziest of all, the film substitutes violence for plot: hands are severed, necks are slashed, somebody gets crucified with chopsticks. Refn said in a recent interview that “the chief enemy of creativity is being safe, with good taste”. There’s no danger of that here: but true creativity surely requires more than just conjuring up imaginative ways to torture people.

Let badgers live, as poor man’s pandas

Tian Tian, one of Edinburgh Zoo’s bamboo-munchers, is the Jennifer Aniston of the panda community, with the pregnancy police desperate to shine a spotlight up her cervix. She is under 24-hour surveillance. Her sleeping patterns are recorded. Her urine is regularly tested for hormones (I’m surprised no celeb sleuth ever followed Aniston into the lav to try the same trick).

All this fuss over a species that shows no interest in its own survival — it hates sex and enjoys only one, nutritionally-bankrupt food — makes me think we’d be better off finding a panda stand-in. Step forward Boris, the TB-spreading badger. The farmer’s musteline nemesis could easily pass for a poor man’s panda: it’s smaller, working a similar monochrome look, but rather better at reproduction.

So in place of a cull, I suggest we offer badgers the cushier option of retraining. If they learn to climb trees and eat bamboo, there should be a job for them in every zoo in the world.

Foxtons’ rise is maddening

Fiinally: a way to persuade the baby-boomers that rocketing house prices are no cause for celebration. Since the suffering of Generation Rent — unable to mount the property ladder, living in thrall to landlords — has not moved them, perhaps Foxtons’ stock market float will.

The smuggest, most aggressive and most divisive of estate agents, easily recognised by those racing green Minis that inspire resentment in other drivers, is listing to take advantage of the housing recovery. Senior management is tipped to pocket £100 million and the move should aid its plans to double in size over the next five years.

If the housing crisis is a plague on our city, surely Foxtons is the bubonic boil of the high street?