I have had a similar incident to Alison Zammit Endrich (Injured Cyclist Planning To Sue Over Bad Roads, July 21), although my tussle with a slotted grating at University only cost me €55 for a new rim. I was somewhat shaken but wide in-line gratings "scare the willies out of me", to paraphrase Douglas Adams, and believe me they are all over the place. While many of the comments left online have been conciliatory to Ms Zammit-Endrich's accident, some have stated that she should not have been in a bus lane or have used the incident as a now quite usual launching point for a bit of bike-bashing.

Let's get two things straight. One, bicycles can use bus lanes or more correctly "priority vehicle lanes" as can taxis, motorcycles, minibuses, horse-drawn cabs, etc. After all, if they couldn't, clearly cyclists would have to ride between a line of buses and private cars. Surely a far riskier prospect.

Point two: Anti-cyclist readers tend to assume that all cyclists are hobby riders, whereas they actually range from committed athletes to those who commute by bicycle.

There is a Californian movement sporting "one less car" tee shirts, but that's only half of the equation. Most people guess it's all about pollution and that's as far as they get but there is a far simpler explanation that actually (albeit strangely) benefits the bike bashers.

So without the benefit of pictures allow me to spell out the other half of the equation. One less car (i.e. the cyclist's car) equals one more parking space and less time for other car drivers to spend in traffic.

So please be a bit more sympathetic - Ms Zammit-Endrich was actually trying to help out in a very practical way.