Pedestrians, cyclists and rotten tomatoes (1)

George Debono (October 22) has finally answered my two questions. The answer to the first question is that in the brave new world of the 21st century a mini gets full marks for crashing into a Jaguar and eliminating it from the road in the interests of the environment.

I leave it up to readers to determine the wisdom of using environmental considerations when determining who is at fault in traffic accidents. As far as I am concerned this kind of reasoning brings me back to vegetables, only this time it is lettuce not tomatoes since there is a Maltese saying that makes reference to lettuce which aptly sums up such reasoning.

As for the second question, Dr Debono uses maths to provide the answer. He states that P (Pedestrian) + B (Bicycle) is greater than P. However he fails to realise that since B does not have an engine, then B is equal to zero, irrespective of the gear it is in (gearing does not increase an engine's power, if it did it would fall foul of the First Law of Thermodynamics; it simply changes the way the power is delivered). Therefore P+B is in this case equal to P, something which I strongly suspected before Dr Debono's attempt at maths. QED, we used to say in my "O" Level days.