It's true that the system has always tended to assume that the criminal classes and the lower classes were synonymous and has, in consequence, struggled to come to terms with modern society where the baddies and the goodies are lee easy to separate. It's also true that once brake horsepower had replaced the horse as the daily transport of the well-to-do, a lot of people came into contact with the police who would never otherwise have done so. When I was a lad, there was a split between senior detectives and senior traffic officers over the consequences of upsetting the traditional police-supporting middle classes but that didn't get in the way of enforcement. Some of the older forum members have posted about a time when they would not wheel a pedal cycle on a pavement and spent ages on quiet Sunday mornings, jumping up and down on the rubber strips which activated traffic light.
Mutatis mutandis the behaviour of most drivers was similar. Visible police patrolling combined with enforcement produced civilised standards from most road users. I'm not naïve and I know that there used to be some appalling crashes, excess alcohol being one obvious contributor. Indeed, the breathalyser is an example of what I'm saying: the police got stuck and levels of drink driving fell. By no means eliminated but the incidence of people who were otherwise a good D&I had they not been driving fell dramatically.
I'd reiterate that IMO traffic policing has collapsed. The numbers of specialist traffic patrols has fallen and the amount of time spent by non-specialist uniform patrol officers on dealing with traffic offences is now a tiny fraction of what was once the case. One area where the effort has increased is in the investigation of serious crashes ie detective rather than preventative policing.
I've pointed to various reasons for these trends. It seems to me, however, that one of the biggest threats to vulnerable road users, including cyclists, in all this is the emphasis on "casualty reduction." The threat is insidious. After all, what could be more laudable than reducing casualties? The problem is that it is little more than a form of victim-blaming and those who trumpet the UK's record of casualty reduction are less strident when it comes to levels of walking and cycling. I'm saying that casualties are reduced by vulnerable road users being frightened off the roads.
Ensuring an appropriate level of response to reports of incidents isn't easy, not least because the arrival of a car always seems more significant than the arrival of a police officer, whether they are in the car or on foot. It's also easy after the event to deem that the response should have been different, even though it was determined by what was known at the time and who was available to attend. There are cock-ups and I blush
when I remember how many were down to me. I can only plead, as I usually did when Department Y called, that I was doing my best. Everybody has there own anecdote, often recycled, about armed men and helicopters arriving for a cat up a tree or nobody attending for days when something truly serious had happened. IME, cyclists are singled out in this respect.