It really gets my goat when cyclists act like idiots. And, as the chairman of Cyclox (the cycling campaign for Oxford), I get it in the neck from just about everyone when cyclists misbehave.

Radio stations I've never even heard of want to know what I'm going to do about it. So my blood boiled when an 80-year-old woman had her hip broken by a cyclist in Cornmarket Street.

The culprit wasn't even a huggable hoodie, but a man in his 70s without the guts to face the consequences of his stupidity.

Passers-by clocked his white goatee, but he didn't hang about to help the frightened old lady.

What with the pavement cyclists, the red-light jumpers and badly-parked bikes littering the streets, Oxford's cyclists can be a hard bunch to champion. But I do, because cyclists are a good thing for society.

I'm with HG Wells when he said: "Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the human race."

However, as with all groups, a few idiots can wreck things for everyone. A mixture of proper policing and canny road design can transform Oxford into a city in which cyclists and pedestrians are in harmony.

Cyclists are tempted to cycle in Cornmarket Street during the prohibited hours (10am-6pm), partly because there is often no real danger in doing so and partly because there is never anybody official there to stop you.

The council should acknowledge these facts by doing a study into the re-admitting of cyclists into Cornmarket Street during the day. And also in Queen Street, a vital east-west link that must be opened up again to two-wheelers when they finally get rid of the buses.

Letting bikes back into Cornmarket isn't as crazy as it sounds. Cyclist-pedestrian accidents are rare and always less serious than motor vehicle-pedestrian accidents.

The old lady whose hip was broken said she hadn't been looking out for cyclists as they are banned from Cornmarket Street in the day. If she had been, would the accident have occurred?

And the old rat didn't run her over because there is an inherent problem with cyclists and pedestrians mixing; he ran her over because he was a thoughtless twit. Studies by the Government's Transport Research Laboratory have shown that "there are no real factors to justify excluding cyclists from pedestrianised areas - accidents between pedestrians and cyclists are very rare."

On the strength of this research, Cambridge City Council did a study into lifting the city centre ban on cycles in pedestrianised areas. The council had to work hard initially to ensure people like that goatee-bearded idiot were using the shared space sensibly, but officers found that there was no increase in recorded accidents in the city centre involving cyclists. During the study, "83 per cent of pedestrians felt cyclists were travelling at reasonable speeds and 94 per cent felt safe around cyclists".

The same has happened in lots of other places - Birmingham's New Street, for example. So come on, Oxford, show some imagination.