• PAUL Braithwaite is a tireless champion of sustainable transport, and is to be commended as such.

While I fully concur with his concerns for cyclists and pedestrians in a corona-adapted world (Post lockdown, beware the dangers of traffic in the city, Letters, May 7), he needs to consider the immense financial pressure under which local authorities will (and do) find themselves, along with all the political contention that infrastructure schemes inevitably create.

It has been clearly demonstrated that the uptake of cycling is almost exclusively limited by one factor: people do not feel safe on the roads due to motorists.

Sadly, current laws and policies do not do much to dispel such worries, and convince people otherwise, as show the deaths reported countless times in these pages.

We are, however, entering a new era, one where we need to encourage sustainable (and segregated?) transport more than ever.

With the best will in the world and despite the commitment of transport secretary Grant Shapps on Saturday to provide £2 billion for cycling and walking, this is not going to be achieved by changes in physical infrastructure alone.

We are going to need a radical change in the relationship between motorists and more sustainable transport modes, so that there is a presumed liability placed upon motorists in the event of an impact with a cyclist or pedestrian.

Such a change will have zero impact on those motorists who already drive in an attentive, careful and considerate manner.

Only implementation of a presumed liability approach will bring in the step change that Paul Braithwaite and many others are quite rightly seeking.

DR GREG CARSON
NW5