Emma, per your post and PM, I'm not saying that inappropriate speed *isn't* a problem. If you're driving too fast for the conditions, you're not safe.

But the conditions might be a twisty country road in the rain where 20mph is right on the limit, or it might be a completely empty three-lane motorway at 4am where there's little reason to have a speed limit at all. And the conditions also depend on the car you're driving - a sports car at 100mph has plenty of scope for manoevring and braking, whereas an SUV at 100mph isn't going to do anything but carry on at that speed. So you drive based on whatever is the limiting factor for your situation. 30mph in towns is fine, because that's about the limit for decent situational awareness.

The real problem is always either inadequate skill, inadequate attention or errors of judgement. Inappropriate speed for the conditions is a by-product of one or more of those. Other by-products are swerving without warning, failure to steer correctly into a corner, and loss of control during excessive braking. After that, the results will depend on what you're driving and what anyone you run into is driving (if they are). But the best plan is not to get into the situation in the first place, instead of relying on mitigating features of your vehicle!

Yes, cyclists and pedestrians are much more vulnerable when drivers get it wrong, and I'm not excusing the actions of dangerous drivers in any way. When you're on the road, it's your responsibility to drive safely for the conditions.

My point was that this doesn't give cyclists carte blanche to blame all accidents on the driver. For a similar example, consider a recent UK anti-speeding TV spot, showing a teenage girl running out into traffic from between two parked cars. The message is supposed to be "don't drive fast, because it's the driver's fault". The message to me was "no sympathy - it's entirely the girl's fault, and the driver wouldn't have had a chance at any speed". It's unreasonable and unjust to expect the entire world to wrap itself in cotton wool just so that people can behave irresponsibly. My experience is that the majority of car drivers *do* take due care around cyclists, whereas the majority of cyclists *don't* take due care of their own safety.

Clearly, Clarkson was exaggerating this for effect. Yes, this won't be funny for cyclists and pedestrians who've been involved in accidents with cars. But for a driver like myself who knows that most trips through town, at some point they'll have to brake sharply to avoid a cyclist who's turned without warning or who's appeared out of the night wearing dark clothes with no lights and no reflectors on their bike, it's voicing their deep frustration. My wife is a fairly keen cyclist and she shares my frustration, because she knows that these self-indulgent idiots are giving cyclists generally a bad name. If the idiots were in the minority then fine, but sadly the idiots are in the majority when it comes to cycling, because there's absolutely no barrier to buying a bike and heading out on the road without knowing what you're doing.

Graham.