Letter: Protection from lawless cyclists
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Your support makes all the difference.Sir: In raising the greater question of how far the police should be free to decide which laws should be enforced and which should not, this correspondence has rather moved away from David Greenfield's original point (Letters, 30 March).
Every day we see cyclists riding on the pavement, switching at will between road and pavement, ignoring clear 'No Cycling' signs, and even ignoring traffic signals. These are not children or fragile old people but young and middle- aged adults, often riding at considerable speeds. We appear to have come to a situation in which cyclists, having whinged for years about being endangered by thoughtless motorists, are now demonstrating in their treatment of pedestrians exactly that lack of regard for other road users they themselves complain of, coupled with a level of blatant law-breaking that motorists would never dare to attempt.
If the police will not enforce the law as clearly restated in the current edition of the Highway Code, then it is not enough to ask that cyclists should have and use bells and lamps. Has the time not come for them to be required to carry licence plates and to hold third-
party insurance so that when they have run into us and drawn blood (or just forced us off the path and into the mud), we can identify them and take action against them?
Yours faithfully,
J. V. GOUGH
Leicester
4 April
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