Frans Said, in his letter ‘Discipline on our roads’ (February 12) makes a number of assumptions regarding cycling, particularly how many people cannot cycle.

The truth is where there is a way there is a will. There are specialised cycles for disabled cyclists and there is no upper age limit for cycling. There are numerous studies that cite cycling as beneficial in old age.

I know of at least two sprightly octogenarian cyclists who can attest to this, having a positive effect on a number of age-related problems and significant cost benefits to the State in reduced health care.

Mr Said can also rest assured that children under the age of 12 can still use the pavement quite legally and be safe there.
The implication is we need to make our streets safe enoughfor a 12-year-old to cycle. Ifwe had done this years ago perhaps we would not have so much school traffic!

Regarding registration, this is a bit more tricky. This is because it is motor vehicle registration, the operative word being motor. Such motor vehicles also park on public roads, pollute and create congestion, when bicycles do not.

But even if we did have a scheme, how would one control it, faced with tourists, foreign boat owners, athletes and so on bringing unregistered bicycles into the country from another EU state?

We already have that issue, I prefer the term mess, where visiting pedelec owners and tourists do not appear to have to be registered in order to ride around Malta. Is the administration cost too great?

Bicycles need to remain a convenient hop-on-hop-off mode of active transport and any kind of registration scheme restricts that. The 15 per cent drop in utilisation of our own failed pedelec registration scheme amply demonstrates this, despite every other EU country registering (no pun intended) growth instead. Neither has the government come up with a plan for its recovery.