I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike...

I would have been eleven or so the year I was run over by a cop.
It happened off Grandview Drive in London, Ontario. It was the kind of summer afternoon made especially for bicycling--sunny and warm, but with just the right amount of breeze to cool you off without impeding your progress.
I was rip-snorting along Grandview at something close to the speed limit when I decided to make a right-hand turn on to some crescent or other. At the speed I was going, controlling the bike through the turn was somewhat of an issue. I was just starting to straighten up when my eyes picked out a yellow Honda Civic backing out of a drivew--holy shit, right IN FRONT OF ME---
I had enough time to apply my brakes, snapping one cable and actually flattening my rear tire. Then I was rolling on the ground, with no clear idea how I'd got from there to here, and that little Honda Civic was suddenly a very large Honda Civic, a positively ENORMOUS Honda Civic, and its right rear wheel came up over my right leg as if the driver was backing over a speed bump.
We owned a Honda Civic once, and the running joke around our house was "when's it going to grow up?" Now I found myself thankful I'd been run over by a baby car; it hurt, but it was nothing I couldn't walk off. I was lucky, I told myself. Really lucky. And I was going to tear that driver a new asshole. You're supposed to look both ways, shit-for-brains, I rehearsed in my head. My father is a police officer and he'll be very interested to hear about this...
Then the cop got out. In full dress uniform. My bowels turned to water along with my stupid bravado. I thought about asking him to run me over again instead of fining me. Hell, he could back over me all day if he didn't tell my parents. But I found I couldn't speak at all.
The officer made sure I was okay and then went into Full Cop Mode, lecturing me about the responsible handling of a bicycle and doing his level best to make my hair stand on end. He told me about all the charges he could lay--the potential fines added up to more money than I'd ever seen in one place. Almost absentmindedly, he added that my bike didn't have a sounding device and that was worth another $65.
The cop observed my face, falling with each charge. By the time he finished his spiel, I was in tears, and not only from my leg. He concluded by saying he was going to let me off with a warning. "Let this be a lesson to you, young man."

It was.
Since that summer day, whenever riding a bicycle, I have done my best to observe every rule of the road. I use hand signals. I don't run stop signs or red lights. I claim my little bit of lane and stick to it.
And I haven't rode a bike now for going on ten years.
Oh, through my teens and early twenties I was a constant cyclist, commuting all over creation. Neither rain nor wind nor snow would stop me, although slush certainly slowed me down. It helped that during a large chunk of that time I lived in London, a city whose planners must have included a bunch of two-wheelers. At the time, you could get most of the way across the city without riding on more than three hundred metres of city street. The bike paths were everywhere.
I moved to Kitchener-Waterloo in 1990 and discovered a whole new world, one not especially habitable for cyclists. The drivers here acted as if I had a bulls-eye painted on my back and the rules of the road that had served me in such good stead for eight years had suddenly undergone a total change. Drivers screamed at me to "get the fuck on the sidewalk where you belong!" Hand signals were ignored. After several near-collisions, not one of which was my fault, I decided to call it a cycling career. The four-wheeled menaces could have the damn road all to themselves.
Thing is, I don't blame them. I've seen far too many cyclists who have obviously not been run over by cops, blatantly ignoring every last traffic law, a world unto themselves. Every day I see at least one cyclist roaring along on the sidewalk and I sometimes have to restrain myself from giving them a little stick in their spokes. I don't say anything to these idiots--they're on a bike, they can outrun me--but Lord, I want to.
Bikes are vehicles under the Highway Traffic Act. As such, their place is not on the sidewalk. It is on the road, and they are to be given their space. In fact, should a cyclist have to make a left turn, he is suppsed to enter the left-hand-turn lane, just as a car would, and make his turn from there. Like a car, a bike is supposed to turn into an inside lane and then change to the outside when the way is clear.
Nobody does this, of course. The few cautious ones walk their bikes across two streets; the rest just let their imagination be their guides.
What we need is a bicycle licensing system like that in the Netherlands. There should also be phalanxes of bicycle cops--God knows they could write up enough tickets to more than pay their own salaries. With such a system and strict enforcement in place, maybe drivers would begin to accept the two-wheeled vehicles sharing their roads.
Maybe.
In the meantime, there's a brand new bike residing in my shed. I've never ridden it; in fact, it's not even put together. I'll drag it out the day I think I might be able to get to work without being run over.
Once was enough.