Definitely self-congratulatory.

I chose active travel over car dependency at an early age. I also worked in the cycle trade. My opinion is that roads have become far more dangerous, however, most of what can be killed by the car has already been killed and the reason for fewer deaths is slimmer pickings.

Children and the elderly are two canaries in the coal mine.

Kids used to get new bicycles at Christmas, play in the streets and be 'free range' in the UK. Nowadays they are all welded to mobile phones and cocooned in SUVs. Only something like one on four know how to ride a bicycle nowadays and that Christmas trade in bicycles died thirty years ago.

Although you see a fair few Lime bikes and people commuting by bicycle in London, most bicycles are sold to rich people for them to strap to cars, for them to drive to a designated safe spot, for them to ride from the car park in a loop back to the car park. You never see these bicycles parked up next to the door at a supermarket or even at a railway station, partly due to the risk of theft, but also due to the dangers of the road.

As for the elderly, nowadays they are boomers and they all have cars. They only give up their car keys when they get condemned to retirement homes. Hence, like kids, old people are not to be found in the streets, unless cocooned in tin boxes.

As for being cocooned in a tin box, what happened to spirited driving? In the 1970s it was normal for people to cross the country with no sat nav or seat belt, driving as if they were in a Group B rally car, taking their special shortcuts, drunk, with cigarette in hand. Nowadays this doesn't happen, people in cars just shuffle from traffic light to traffic light fearing CCTV and speed cameras.

We have also priced out younger motorists, who would have been the 'spirited drivers'.

Hitchhiking used to exist in the 1970s. Thatcher era stranger danger put an end to that, so nobody hitchhikes these days. Does this mean that hitchhiking is safer? No!

There is another aspect of car dependency and 'safety'. Sure, you might not get killed in an ultra-violent crash in a tin-box cocoon, however, what about cardiovascular disease? Being car dependent and eating the convenience foods of the car dependent is a shortcut to obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, cognitive decline and death by blocked arteries.

The government knows this, and this is why 'active travel' is a phrase. By 2030 the UK government wants more than half of all journeys in built up areas to be 'active travel' rather than lame car dependency.