Another week, another cycle superhighway. Another week, another cyclist killed and another “gerroff our roads” bike critic. Britain’s rapid-cycling traffic schizophrenia showed itself in particularly florid form on Wednesday when three things all happened at once.

Transport for London gave final approval to the new segregated “Crossrail for bikes” route from Barking to Acton, a cyclist was injured in a collision with a National Express coach, and Sir John Armitt, a board member for the selfsame TfL, claimed that “the biggest danger to cyclists on the roads in London are actually themselves... The way many, many, many of them ride, one is surprised that in fact the number of accidents is not far larger”. Sir John, it turns out, is also chairman of the National Express coach group.

His comments might have been peculiarly ill-timed, but the sentiments are always the same: bicycles are irritating road-clutter that get in the way of legitimate, law-abiding traffic such as… er cars and… ooh blimey yes National Express coaches, so if cyclists get killed or injured then it’s definitely their fault.

Actually, Sir John is right. Cyclists are a pain: plenty of them do ride like lunatics in London and cycling in Britain is nothing like cycling elsewhere. But in this, TfL, and every other public body with responsibility for traffic in this country, has only itself to blame.

Years ago, the only people who rode bicycles were children and posties. Everyone else walked or caught the bus. All the rules of the road were designed for motorised vehicles, because as far as the law was concerned bicycles didn’t exist.

There were lots of reasons why people took up cycling again. It is cheap, it is healthy and after the July 2005 bombing of London there was a time when no one ever wanted to go by tube again. Above all, lots of people simultaneously discovered the one crowning advantage cycling has over all other forms of commuting: it’s fun.

But if staying safe on a bicycle meant that the new cyclists of London needed to develop a technique based on a mixture of road-racing, parkour and BMX, then it was worth it. Since the law ignored them, then they would ignore the law.

So of course no one cycles in London like they do in the Netherlands or Germany. When Holland first built roads, it built cycle lanes to go alongside them. Britain is now in the expensive position of retrofitting lanes (or £140m cycle superhighways) to streets designed only for cars.

That omission in transport planning means that London has created for itself a day such as Wednesday when, in the space of a few hours, cyclists get a new lane, news of another collision, and yet more criticism from a defender of the status quo. As consolation, it’s worth remembering what really lurks behind many motorists’ ire: the knowledge that bikes are the future, but cars are the past.

Bella Bathurst is the author of The Bicycle Book (HarperCollins £8.99)