One or two statements in Dr Bezzina’s letter concerning the bicycle (Bad air, TMIS 14 October) need gentle correcting.

Dr Bezzina tells us that (the italics are mine) “Statistically speaking, the more cyclists there are, the more likely they will start contributing significantly to road injury figures”, without quoting the source of his statistics, if any.

Linking exposure to fatalities is far from being a simple case of “add water and mix” as Dr Bezzina suggests. There are a great many other factors to take into account when considering cycling safety. These include, in particular, cultural attitudes (largely conditioned by local laws and the traffic code) and cycling distances. Other factors are the bicycling environment itself, road layout, traffic speed, traffic mix, topography, climate and so on, but the most important factor of all is the number of cyclists on the road. It is widely acknowledged that where bicycles are extensively used (as in Holland), the critical mass of bicycles on the road promotes a more cautious attitude to cyclists from road vehicle drivers so that the (relative) accident rate actually goes down. Therefore, an increase in the number of cyclists on the road does not automatically translate into a corresponding increase in the accident rate of cyclists.

That “cyclists are at greater risk in Malta than in Holland”, as Dr Bezzina asserts, is not necessarily the case at all. Eurostat figures show that Malta has the lowest rate of road deaths per million inhabitants in the European Union – followed closely by the Netherlands. The typical Maltese car driver may appear to drive in a flamboyant manner (to put it mildly) but not aggressively (and it is the latter that endangers cyclists and other road users). It is entirely possible, of course, that the apparent respect for cyclists of the Maltese motorist may simply be linked to a bicycle being harder than the human being riding on it – and therefore more likely to damage the pristine paintwork of the car than, say, a pedestrian. But the fact remains that private cars do not hassle cyclists on our roads. On the other hand, buses and heavy goods vehicles do pose a threat to cyclists who share the road with them, but this can largely be avoided by planning cycling routes so as to use streets less frequented by these vehicles. Proper cycle paths on major roads would eliminate this hazard.

In the unlikely event that cycle paths on major roads – and legislation favourable towards cyclists – are introduced in Malta so that bicycles come to be widely used, there is no reason why Malta should not become as safe a place in which to cycle as Holland. Of course, a cycle path is more than a mere stripe of surplus white paint along the road gutter.

From a cyclist’s point of view the message is therefore quite the opposite to what Dr Bezzina would seem to suggest – it is “safety in numbers”.

George Debono

SLIEMA