Jim Wightman and George Debono have, as expected, responded at length to my criticism of the evidence, or rather the lack thereof, supporting their continued attacks on Maltese drivers, the Transport Ministry, the law courts and the police. The recent full-page feature about cycling and road safety is also quite timely. Opinions, opinions.

Debono’s letter is quite personal and attempts to credit me with statistics published by the Dutch Institute for Road Safety Research and then attempts to discredit such data with his own personal opinions, catchphrases and anecdotes.

I insist that the Dutch report of 2013 stated that the serious injury rate for cyclists, moped riders and motorcyclists had been increasing in the Netherlands year by year while that for car occupants had been falling steadily despite a fall in cyclist fatalities in that period.

However, the point is that the rate of fatalities for car occupants fell faster than that for cyclists.

In 2011, the Institute for Road Safety Research also reported that: “On average, per travelled kilometre, cycling in the Netherlands is about 4.7 times more dangerous than driving a car. It was then calculated that, if 10 per cent of all car drivers, including the young and elderly, replaced their short car trips to bicycle trips, an annual extra four to eight road fatalities and approximately 500 serious injuries were to be expected.”

I leave it to readers to conclude whether my argument that cycling, even in the best of cases, is an unsafe method of urban transport is to be believed.

It is notable that the Bicycle Advocacy Group continues to avoid supporting any enforcement of road safety regulations for cyclists, including the most basic safety measures, such as a helmet.

Rather, they continue to make calls for changes in other road users’ behaviour, despite recent European data which show unequivocally that the Maltese are among the safest drivers in Europe.

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