It is difficult to understand the object of Karl Soler’s repeated disagreeable letters to this newspaper. It seems as if his life objective is to banish pedestrians and bicycles from our roads so that motorists have the road entirely to themselves (March 23).
In December 2010 (under the improbable title of ‘Improving the safety of roads for all’), he had the audacity to defend drink-driving. He heaped praise on our traffic policymakers for “resisting pressure to introduce random alcohol testing and arbitrary thresholds” on the preposterously illogical basis that “the great majority (two-thirds in various countries) of fatal road accidents are not alcohol related”.
Probably, to Soler’s great satisfaction, Malta’s upper alcohol limit has remained steadfastly at a high 80mg/dl and drink-driving remains as free as in the good old days of King Nopar.
Having already established his credentials as an opponent of healthy mobility for years, Soler now adds insult to injury for all pedestrian victims of road accidents. He expresses approval of a recent sentence (acquittal) by ‘the courts of Malta’ which “confirmed that pedestrians must take care on our roads in order to avoid being partly or fully culpable for an accident”.
His repeated unsubstantiated negative statements about bicycle safety continue to be wrong.
By way of proving his point, he tells us that “25 per cent of road fatalities in Holland in 2011 were cyclists”. Of course this is so.This percentage matches neatly with the modal 30 per cent share of transport by bicycle trips (ECF cycling barometer, 2103).
His claim that “serious injury rates for cyclists… have increased year by year” in Holland is patently wrong. In fact, road accident injuries (cyclists, motorcyclists and car drivers) halved since 1980 in spite of the enormous rise in car and bicycle use. This decline in injury rates is described as ‘spectacular’.
Soler is urged to inform himself better.
As for the rest of his rant, it is best left to readers to judge whose are the more balanced views.