• With reference to your feature in the last Motoring supplement, the writer attempted a short paragraph on cycling. This bit betrayed the lack of understanding of cyclists in Malta, as, by the look of things, it seemed the writer did not cycle regularly, if at all. According to him, accounts of uncaring motorists are poppycock.

I drive a car and a motorcycle and I ride a bicycle, every day, on Malta’s roads. And I ride on my own, so “three and four abreast” does not come into it. In my experience, some car drivers are absolutely blind to cyclists. The presence of a bicycle on the road simply does not penetrate their brains. They are either stupid, arrogant, or both.

On a bicycle, I have had numerous instances of a car going past and cutting just in front of me to turn sharp left into a side road. In the minds of these people, a bicycle simply does not register as a vehicle with a right to be on the road.

I attribute this to the great dearth of motorbikes and bicycles on Maltese roads on weekdays, the senseless car culture promoted by people like the writer in question and abetted by our visionless government, and the fact that a lot of people simply have no experience of two-wheel riding. The fact that I am still alive is because I keep a 360 degree lookout when I am on two wheels. If I had to depend on the benevolence of car drivers, I would have been maimed or killed a long time ago.