Rules of the Road

Since I wrote to you (ed note: a previous email about a close encounter on Lux roadways which you can read here) I have been overtaken illegally countless times (it is not possible to be overtaken legally by a car whose wheels are all on the same lane as I am cycling on. The width of a Fiat 500 is 1.75 m , the legal clearance is  a country road is 1.5 m, the width of the bike at the Handels is 0.48 m. That would require a lane of country road to be 3.73 m wide!

It would be fine to have other readers share their experiences. But, perhaps, if we use the power of journalism and interview the legislators (do they think on how to enforce the rules they create) and the police commissioner (how does he enforce the rules), we might save some lives. Remember, one lost life is one too much.

The sadness I feel when I hear of a lost life while doing sports is indescribable. I do not want to be a statistic. Neither do I want others to be a statistic.

There are more thoughts that I would like to share:

a. A few years ago someone crashed into my new car and drove off. When I went to make the police report and asked if they had any camera’s in the neighbourhood, they cited privacy as an issue with having cameras. Therefore, simply to defend corrupt, cheating, individuals we have privacy laws for which honest people have to pay the consequences. Enforcing the bicycle rules without videos would be an impossibility.

b. Of the many friends I have had in my life, I wrote the email two you with two friends in particular: Clifford Micallef, a schoolfriend that was killed in Malta by a drunk driver while cycling, and Daphne Caruana Galiziia, a class-mate and inlayer years a schoolfriend that paid with her life for fighting corruption in Malta.

It is with the lives of these two friends that I wish to push for more to be done for the cyclists. And if you want more to write on…. We can talk about tax evasion and how no one stops it ;)

Best regards,

Pierre