I refer to Jean Karl Soler’s letter entitled ‘Cycling and mortality’ (The Sunday Times of Malta, February 1).
Soler’s preposterous comment that Malta has “one of the lowest road death rates” so soon after the gruesome death of two pedestrians was particularly insensitive.
This statement was originally based on deaths per million population and not per kilometres travelled. Calculated in terms of distances travelled by our vehicles, Malta’s road fatality data would reveal a high fatality rate.
Unaware that millions of bicycle trips are made daily in Holland, Soler made the same unfortunate blunder by quoting the 2010 statistic of 640 cyclist deaths in Holland, a country which boasts the lowest cycle fatality rate in the whole world, namely 1.6 deaths per 100 million kilometres cycled.
The fatality rate for the UK (where few people cycle) is at least four times higher, with some even putting it at 20 times higher.
Soler is also wrong on one-way streets. Bicycle contraflows are a normal traffic arrangement in most European towns and cities. His comments about “breaking the law” are therefore wildly irrelevant.
Finally Soler misinterprets the meaning of presumed liability. This refers to civil (not criminal) liability (not guilt) of any vehicle driver who injures or kills a vulnerable road user.
This legal remedy applies to road users in a hierarchical manner – not only to cyclists, as Soler incorrectly states.
Given that far more pedestrians than cyclists are injured on roads, the main beneficiaries are, in fact, children, the disabled and the aged who often cannot afford the legal fees for claiming damages.
What adds a further blow to innocent victims is that they are at the mercy of motorists insurance companies.
As the parents of a young girl killed in an accident remarked: “Her death was being treated as if she was no more than a cat run over, a mere road kill.”
This is probably how the parents of two young girls who were killed on the Mrieħel bypass some years ago must feel.
The legal principle of presumed liability is in force in all European countries (except, ironically, the UK and Malta).
It has exerted a positive influence in European countries by prompting vehicle drivers to drive cautiously in the presence of pedestrians and children.
That Soler objected so blatantly to a legal remedy which affords protection to vulnerable road users is totally unacceptable and dangerously misleading to readers.