It is truly difficult to understand what motivates Jean Karl Soler to go to such lengths to give the bicycle a bad name. Once more, he resorts to touting statistics out of context to make his point.

It is meaningless to compare bicycle and motor vehicle accidents. Besides ignoring the elementary principle of comparing ‘like with like’, Soler persists in failing to put his claim into perspective. A motorist travels tens of thousands of kilometres annually – infinitely greater distances than the odd hundred kilometres annually covered on a push bicycle.

Using Soler’s misguided reasoning, one can equally argue that driving a car is about 250,000 times more dangerous than travelling by air. This may sound awfully dangerous for motor vehicles if not put into context with the immense distances travelled by an aircraft.

Soler repeatedly fails to understand that quoting a number in isolation to make a point is unethical. As to the presumed liability question, attitudes about vulnerable road users (for which read pedestrians, especially children and the aged) tend to be as uncaring, unsocial and repugnant in Malta as they are in the UK.

It is pertinent to quote Lord Denning, who eloquently summed it up as follows:

“In the present state of motor traffic, I am persuaded that any civilised system of law should require, as a matter of principle, that the person who uses this dangerous instrument on the roads – dealing death and destruction all round – should be liable to make compensation to anyone who is killed or injured in consequence of the use of it.

“There should be liability without proof of fault. To require an injured person to prove fault results in the gravest injustice to many innocent persons who have not the wherewithal to prove it.”