I drove to work this morning, it was purely down to being a bit tired and very lazy!

My alarm went off and instead of jumping enthusiastically out of bed to go and put the kettle on I hit the snooze button...a couple of times!

I've not really enjoyed cycling to work all that much so far this winter, I think that's mainly been due to the weather, it's just been too warm and very windy. I enjoy the cold, crisp mornings and don’t feel that we're really had any yet.

The last couple of winters have been really enjoyable in a challenging way. I like the cold weather and have enough proper winter cycling kit to make it quite a pleasant experience. This year it's just been on the edge of being cold enough that makes it difficult to judge what to wear at either end of the day.

So, this morning I wimped out, had a lie in and took the car…that was a mistake! The traffic this morning was dreadful and not particularly due to volume, but mainly because of the appalling standard of driving.

I saw quite a few cyclists this morning as well and I would estimate that about 10% of them either had no lights or were not sufficiently lit, but in total this was probably about 4 people.

I did see a couple of cyclists who, due to their riding position on the road, were being overtaken badly by cars and could really have benefitted from a more assertive style of riding. I did not see a single cyclist go through a red light!

This is the sort of behaviour I had to contend with from some of the other drivers...

Tailgating - I think it would have been difficult to get a piece of paper between my rear bumper and the car behind at one point, this was to avoid any cars even thinking about merging into the traffic as two lanes became one.

Speeding - It's pretty endemic to be honest and I think that the majority of drivers break the speed limit.

Rat runs and queue jumping - The same van overtook me 3 times as he tried to use rat runs to avoid the traffic along the main routes, but I still ended up in front of him by just going with the flow.

Makeup - Once the young lady in the convertible Audi hit the brakes to avoid driving into me, I could see that she was slightly distracted by the handbag on her lap and the fact that she was applying her makeup in the rear view mirror.

Mobile phones - I hate to see people using handheld phones whilst driving, maybe if the penalty was more sever it would stop people doing it?

Red light jumping - Despite not seeing a single cyclist jump a red light this morning, I saw several cars do the same thing...but that's ok isn't it?

I wish I hadn't been so lazy and had cycled to work; I'm really not looking forward to the drive home!

Based on information supplied by David Brown.