When I was young, the default mode of transport for every child I knew was the bicycle.

Going to school, the shops, heading to the park, visiting mates, going on adventures – everything was done on two wheels and a decent dose of pedal power.

If you were particularly lucky, your parents got you a Chopper – that icon of the 1970s – or, as the 1980s dawned, a BMX in that gaudy bright yellow and blue colour scheme that they all seemed to originally come in.

I had a hand-me-down bike from an older cousin but cherished it like my first car. It represented freedom. My sole condition was to be back at a pre-designated hour and to ‘be safe’. We did that back then – trust our children and, for that matter, society as a whole.

We didn’t wear helmets and could ride for hours in any given direction. It was free transport and good for us too. Not that we thought about the health benefits for one moment.

We were like the kids in ET – just minus the funny looking extra-terrestrial in a basket (and, as a consequence, sadly, lacking someone to make us fly).

If a chain came off, I could flip it over and be back up and running within moments. It would prove to be the one fleeting time in my life when I was a dab hand with anything to do with the mechanics of a form of transport.

And I suspect I was far from alone. All self-respecting children had a bike.

You didn’t cause trouble on it, you just used it to get from A to B and, quite often, on to C and D.

But somewhere between me being a chain-fixing, pedal-pumping child and having children of my own (which in itself is now a number of decades ago), the attitudes towards kids on bikes changed.

Now, if you spot a group of kids on bikes the local Facebook group springs to life as if the four horsemen of the apocalypse have just been sighted riding into town.

“There’s a gang of kids on bikes – here’s a picture – anyone know who their parents are? Lock up your valuables, traders slam the shutters on your shop windows, old people head to the shelters.”

If they ride on the path – which, let’s be honest, we’ve all done when we were young – then they’re accused of putting the lives of everyone at risk.

If they dare exhibit any forms of high spirits – raised voices, laughing, that sort of thing – we assume it is the rallying call of an imminent rampage.

And you know what they say about labelling people.

Of course, if they do ride on the road, then they take their young lives in their hands. Potholes and an increasing number of impatient and (let’s not beat about the bush here) thick drivers think it’s OK to give anyone on two wheels about a millimetre of clearance space while not altering their driving in any way whatsoever.

The consequence? Kids on bikes with their friends are not, at least where I live, often spotted. I’m not saying they’re extinct...merely an endangered species.

Parents are scared of their children cycling on the roads. And with good reason; roads have never been busier and increasingly veer dangerously close to not being fit for purpose anymore. Plus, they get scared little Johnny or Janet might be kidnapped if they’re out on their own. The fear culture pervades us all.

They’re valid – if inflated – concerns, of course – and I was just as guilty as anyone else in preventing my kids from following in my own footsteps. I knew how much I loved the sense of freedom but it’s different, isn’t it, when you’ve kids of your own?

These fears take root through sensationalist national headlines. There is, after all, nothing any self-respecting parent wouldn’t do in an attempt to eliminate all (significant) risk their off-spring faces.

No wonder youngsters today see the appeal of e-scooters. But that’s not all.

Communities have – and I generalise terribly here – come to see gatherings of youngsters not as the groups of friends we all once formed part of but as gangs of troublemakers. The consequence? Every trip to see their pals is now done under escort of their parents in a car. All of which adds to the traffic load on our roads.

And when they’re with their friends, they stay inside – engrossed by video games, streaming TV or chatting to God knows who on their phones.

All of which seems a long way from the relatively care-free days of the 1980s. Back then we only had nuclear war to worry about. Were things any safer back then? Possibly not, but it certainly felt it.