This evening whilst in town, I nearly hit a child on a bike:

1) He had no helmet.
2) He had no reflectors.
3) He had no lights.
4) He was wearing black.
5) He was cycling on the wrong side of the road - around a turning. (So he came out of nowhere)
6) He was wobbling all over the place.

In the dark he was as good as invisible. Perhaps he didn't want to live - who knows? I'm just glad I was doing about 15mph, making him relatively easy to avoid. It's people like this that need the new-fangled cycling-proficiency test. When I was a child, my parents wouldn't let me go anywhere on my bike until I passed, which on reflection was a very good thing to do.

As I swerved to avoid him and he swerved to avoid me, he continued to ride along the road on the wrong side - onto a major A-road. It's only a matter of time before something more serious happens.

What galls me more is that his mother was with him all the time and did nothing.