I’ve been thinking about buying a small video camera and mounting it on my helmet or my bike’s handlebars. At the risk of sounding macabre or fatalistic (or scaring my mum), if another road user injures or kills me when I’m out cycling, I’d like them to be held responsible. Surely a reasonable request.

The problem when a bicycle and a motor vehicle collide is that one party is at a massive disadvantage. In 2007, when I got hit head-on by a car that zoomed across my path through an intersection, I had to go to hospital - they had to go to the panel-beater.

Silent witness ... a cyclist with a camera attached to his helmet. Credit:Peter Stoop

On that occasion I was fortunate – an off-duty police officer behind the car that hit me offered to testify on my behalf (I was also lucky to escape serious injury).

But what if there hadn’t been a credible witness? How many times has a driver told police, “He veered into the road, officer”, with the cyclist unable to argue because they were, well, dead? How many more times have cyclists been hit or run off the road by cars, only to have it come down to a case of one person’s word versus the other’s, and no punishment for the party responsible?