TO TACKLE climate change the government needs more cyclists.

If a person smokes or breathes polluted air, they are 99 per cent sure to get lung disease. If you cycle on UK roads - plagued with potholes and careless/lawless/negligent drivers - you are 99 per cent sure to be injured. If we keep burning fossil fuel we are guaranteed to lose the war against climate change.

With advances in medical science someone with lung disease can have a lung transplant. But only when a donor dies!

With Whaley Bridge being evacuated - i.e. residents being ‘transplanted’ to temporary homes - we surely need 50 per cent of the world’s drivers to become cyclists today. For by the time every driver has an electric car, many parts of the world are guaranteed to be under water, or too hot to support life.

However, according to Department for Transport figures, the number of UK cyclists killed or seriously injured each year has increased by 29 per cent from 3,191 in 2005 to 4,132 in 2018. And three out of five adults (61 per cent) in England think cycling on roads is too dangerous.

Also, in 1983, front seatbelt wearing regulations for drivers and passengers came into force. Accordingly, cycle lanes which run adjacent to parking lanes must be made unlawful - for they amount to demanding that cyclists ride in the ‘door zone’ i.e. a ‘death trap’, which is surely akin to driving without a seat belt.

In short, in order for the Zero Carbon Britain Project to succeed, we surely need zero lawless drivers. And, with so few police officers and speed cameras, the only sensible scientific solution to achieve it would be for all bar emergency vehicles to be fitted with speed limiters. Then all we need worry about is cancer, drink/drug driving, and rising energy and insurance costs.

Allan Ramsay

Radcliffe