Nathan Thomas considers himself one of the lucky ones.
Seven years ago, while on his regular weekday ride home from work, he was "T-boned" by a car and slammed up onto the bonnet, against the windscreen and down onto the road.
"I don't think anybody in that situation thought I was going to survive that accident," he said.
"Through sheer luck, I was relatively unscathed but everybody who was there didn't think I was going to make it home that night."
There was no deliberate intent involved, just a lack of driver awareness compounded by every bike rider's complete vulnerability when surrounded by metal vehicles capable of much faster speeds, and driven with greatly varied degrees of skill, capability and perception.
As recently as mid-April, a car travelling north on Marcus Clarke Street turned left into Gordon St and cut off a cyclist, the collision serious enough to have the rider conveyed to hospital. It took more than 10 days and a police plea to find the driver.
Depending on the circumstances, drivers who fail to see a cyclist and whose actions result in an collision - nearly always resulting in the cyclist coming off second best - currently face a modest fine from negligent driving, as was the case from a now-infamous Coulter Drive car v cyclist swerving incident last year.
But for the cycling community and Greens transport spokesperson and regular cyclist Jo Clay, no impact on the driver's record simply isn't good enough.
Ms Clay's proposal, backing a long-running campaign by Pedal Power, is to add the offence of "negligent driving - harm to a vulnerable road user" to the infringements, identifying the harm involved, raise the maximum penalty to 50 units or $1600, and incur the loss of three demerit points .
The "soft" penalty levied against the driver from last year's shocking incident sent the cycle community into outrage, including Pedal Power chief executive Ian Ross.
"It is cheaper for you to get a fine for running into a person riding a bike than it is to fix the bumper you hit them with; that is just not good enough," Mr Ross said.
The proposed amendment, which has the support of the police union, would be added to the standard list of Traffic Infringement Notices under the Road Transport (Safety and Traffic Management Act).
Collected within the same legislation would be motorcyclists, pedestrians and scooter riders.
Since 2016, nine of the 41 people killed on ACT roads have been motorcyclists.
"Motorcyclists are extremely vulnerable road users and we had a lot of conversations with the Motorcycle Riders Association, who are very supportive of these new measures," Ms Clay said.
