Letters in which isolated traffic incidents are reported as though they are a national catastrophe are seriously misleading and unfairly one-sided. Worse still, those reporting such isolated incidents usually go on to make generalisations as was, indeed, the case here. The very title of Frans Said’s letter, Hazard On Two Wheels (August 16), says it all. Singling out an isolated negative incident is meaningless. As the saying goes: one cuckoo doesn’t make a spring.

The other side of the issue is lack of evidence to support repeated claims of misbehaviour of pedal-cyclists on our roads published in this and other newspapers. If Malta’s bicycle riders really rode as dangerously as implied, then, surely, we would by now have had a sizeable collection of traffic-related fatalities caused annually by pedal-bicycles. The truth is quite the other way. There has not been a single significant road accident or traffic fatality primarily caused by a pedal-bicycle within living memory.

This contrasts starkly with the thousands of serious injuries and the 400 or so fatalities inflicted by cars and other motor vehicles on our roads during, say, the past 20 or so years. Among these are two recent tragic incidents in which experienced cyclists were hit by cars and killed. To these are added a half dozen or so recent cases of cyclists hit by a vehicle and seriously injured. All these cyclists were riding correctly – and singly. In most of these incidents, including one fatal case, the driver drove on and abandoned the dead or injured cyclist on the road.

So where’s the beef. dear Said?

Said has, for a long time, systematically disparaged and condemned bicycle users on our roads. Where there is a strong underlying prejudice, then credibility suffers in the absence of supporting evidence.