Columnists are often asked if they change their minds. Do such self-opinionated persons ever admit they might be wrong? Just for once? The answer is yes. I have completed my first year as a London cyclist reborn, and realise I was wrong.

I used to think cyclists were a civic nightmare. They were anarchists of the public realm. They thought themselves above the law. They rode where they liked, when they liked, shouting, whistling, abusing pedestrians and drivers alike. Other citizens might respect traffic lights and road signs. To a London cyclist, such curbs were monstrous diktats.

When the inevitable occurred and there was an accident, the cyclist was never to blame, even when overtaking on an inside left-turn. The lobbyists would demand the arrest, fining, imprisonment and banning of any hapless motorist who must, by definition, have been at fault. To me, cyclists were Lycra louts, self-proclaimed saints of the tarmac jungle.

Cyclists claimed not only their own lanes on the road — swerving out to occupy whole lanes for one puny bike — but lanes on pavements and footpaths too. Pedestrian users of such spaces were peasants, to be abused and, if necessary, clipped with a handlebar to teach them a lesson. How dare they allow their dogs and children to get in the way of holy bikers?

Cyclists knew no highway code. They respected no rule of the road, weaving in and out of walkers, crashing into each other, liberal with expletives. In my experience, most of them needed courses in anger management.

As for “Boris bikes”, Mayor Johnson said they would cost taxpayers nothing, yet City Hall has ended up paying more than half the £11 million-plus annual cost of the scheme, while sponsor Barclays is pulling out early. Unlike similar schemes in Paris and New York that made a profit, London’s cyclists demanded 10,000 bikes virtually free at someone else’s expense. According to Transport for London, the average cyclist is white, university-educated and of above- average income. This group claims the Mayor’s patronage largely because Boris is himself a cyclist. They are unavailable in poorer swathes of London to the east and south of the river. To me, Boris bikes were London’s wind turbines, a crazy, faddish subsidy from poor to rich.

All that is what I thought. Nothing changes our view of the world like passing through the golden gate from the third person plural to first person singular. After a year of cycling I realise I was wrong.

Now I can see cyclists as urban heroes. We are not anarchists but deep-breathing, health-seeking individualists, free spirits of the open road. Yes, we ignore a few nannyish “cyclists dismount” signs but this is civil disobedience in the tradition of John Ball and Tom Paine, the citizen waging war on pointless authority. If it were not for us, the petty jobsworths of health and safety would rule untrammelled. Someone must smash them over the head with their daft rulebooks.

Cyclists I now find to be gentle, caring people. We rub away the harsh corners of an over-regulated city. We stop for old ladies crossing roads. We say thank you and salute kindly drivers. We pioneer new and eccentric fashions. We set land-speed records for racing on two wheels through streaming traffic and around dangerous corners.

We have become catalysts for the reform of London’s archaic one-way streets and its “dumb” traffic lights. That traffic engineers should be stuck in the early-20th century shames London as a modern city. Cyclists see no point in being ruled by stupid one-way signs or waiting idly at red lights. Such impediments to the efficient use of urban space are for wimps and robots.

As for Boris bikes, though I cannot justify their subsidy, they are the carthorses of our age. Pick them up and drop them off is the transport mode of the age. They are chariots of the people, health on wheels. London’s anthem is the bang and then slam of the docking machine.

Cyclists are, of course, “disadvantaged”. We must obey the same rules as motorists, when we pose no threat to other road-users. Yet we are not free like pedestrians to jaywalk and jump red lights. The Royal Parks agency will flog its supposedly sacred acres to any old private company, yet it refuses space to cyclists. Its logo is a No Cycling sign. Cyclists are not even permitted a circuit of Kensington Gardens.

We bike-riders need protection from smart-alec motorists, thuggish van drivers, pedestrians with iPhones and from London’s latest improvised explosive device, the five-year-old on a scooter.

As for London’s cycle lanes, they show authority’s surreal contempt for bike-users, as recorded in Dan Hiscocks’s hilarious Crap Cycle Lanes. A favourite is the Cannon Street chicken run, a metre-long stretch classified by Hiscocks as between “life-threatening” and “chemical assistance needed”.

I have changed. But in reality, this morning’s cyclist is this afternoon’s pedestrian and this evening’s motorist. Cyclists are like Mr Toad in The Wind in the Willows, deriving delight from whatever transport mode happens to take his fancy — a horse-drawn caravan, then a motor car, then an aeroplane.

The same applies to columnists. Every claim, every argument hides a first person singular, a secret self-interest. The only advice I can give the reader is to take nothing at face value. Smell for a rat, or at least a cyclist with an axe to grind. As for me, I can’t wait for my first driverless car.