I love cycling and I cycle as much as possible for transport to work, the shops and also sometimes just for its own sake. I also drive a car when the bike won’t do. I also walk around town when I feel like it. I even use the train sometimes.

I understand that not all people can or want to ride a bike and that there are journeys and uses for a car that can’t be substituted by bicycle. I’ll spare people the details of the net gain that a bicycle brings to my life.

Over the last year or so, I’ve become increasingly aware of the growing hostility, both in the media and on the road, towards riding a bicycle.

We see disproportionate anger, misunderstanding and stereotyping that seems to feed off itself rather than the reality of any problems posed to other roadusers by people riding bicycles.

You also don’t have to look very far to find some uninformed dinosaur of a person passionately venting their ill-conceived opinions, whether it be the in a newspaper, online or on shows such as Top Gear (although admittedly that was quite hilarious).

Cycling infrastructure provision, although laying the groundwork for years to come and saving lives in the present, is regularly described by those who don’t cycle as a “waste of taxpayers’ money” – a view that’s shared by an ageing majority of the country’s politicians and key decision-makers where cycling’s concerned.

I think that the lack of money spent on cycling infrastructure in the UK compared with other nations is every bit as insulting as many of the misconceived, anti-cycling comments we see from Joe Public in online comments threads.

Politicians realise that every bum on a bike seat is one less polluting car sitting in traffic, but it’s short-term votes that count and they also know that a vast swathe of the population either can’t, or stubbornly refuses to, grasp this simple fact.

I propose we have a well-publicised national Back To The Car Day once a month, similar in effect to a strike.

We could perhaps make it the first Wednesday of every month.

All the thousands upon thousands of people such as myself who drive, but choose to use the bike instead for whatever reason, will substitute our usual bike trips on that day with car journeys.

If you don’t own a car at the moment, perhaps rent one for the day if you’re keen to take part.

All the space previously freed up on our roads by those annoying bicycles can now be back-filled to create a nice spike of extra traffic on our roads, with peak times being worst hit.

Would this make a noticeable difference on already gridlocked roads? I personally think it would make a very noticeable difference – enough to give politicians some much-needed food for thought before repeating their decision not to include cycling in their Budget plans.

So let’s send a strong, clear message and all support national Back To The Car Day.

We’ll give the politicians and cycle-haters what they think they want and see how many months it takes for the message to finally sink in that having bicycles on our roads is a lot less infuriating than having no bicycles on our roads.

Michael David, Jersey Street, Brighton