John Humphrys asks: who's to blame for cycle safety?

Veteran BBC broadcaster John Humphrys has weighed into the cycle safety debate in the wake of the death of a London cyclists outside the Olympic Park.

In an article entitled Cycling: Do we take it seriously enough? the Today programme and Mastermind host lit the touchpaper with the question 'who's to blame?'

After mulling over the views of motorists vs. cyclists, he then threw caution to the wind and entered the helmet debate, saying:

"After all, motorcyclists have been compelled to wear helmets for the last forty years or so.

"There seems to be no logic behind forcing one group of road users to wear helmets and not the other.

"It’s true that motorcyclists are likely to be travelling much faster when they have an accident and so risk greater injury to their brains if they are not wearing a helmet.

"But cyclists, riding at slower speeds, can still suffer fatal brain damage."

It's not Humphry's first foray into cycle safety (click here to see him take on shoddy supermarket flat-pack bikes) but he may find himself surprised at the strength of feeling in the community about the issue.

Or maybe not. He writes:

"Cyclists complain that motorists drive too fast, that they are too careless and that they often simply fail to see cyclists before it is too late to avoid an accident.

"Motorists complain that some cyclists seem to think they own the road, ignoring traffic lights, swarming round slow-moving cars and recklessly cutting in on the inside of traffic.

"Too many of them seem to think they don’t need to have lights at night. Accidents seem inevitable."

Humphrys is not the first broadcast star to become involved in cycle safety talk either; Jon Snow, Channel 4 news anchor and CTC President addressed Parliament earlier this year about the lack of provision for cyclists in the UK.