Sir – In a very angry sounding letter (December 12), your correspondent Brian Wallis insists that the police spend just as much time pursuing cyclists who break the laws of the road as they do errant motorists.

I’d like to first make it clear that I have no time whatsoever for those cyclists who ride in the dark without lights, they are indeed breaking the law as Mr Wallis states and also helping to give law-abiding cyclists such as myself a bad name.

But I would add that surely we all acknowledge that the police have limited resources and without wishing to sound facetious, personally I’d prefer they directed the larger proportion of those resources to pursuing people who are driving a 1½-tonne piece of metal at 30mph in an unsafe manner, than those who are pedalling a 15kg piece of metal at 10mph in an unsafe manner, as it seems obvious that the potential to cause death or injury is exponentially higher from the former than it is from the latter.

And I’d like, if I may, to make a broader point? I’m genuinely confused that there seems to be a sizeable minority of motorists who possess a visceral hatred of us cyclists. Yes, I know we can sometimes be annoying, especially on the narrow streets of Oxford, in that you sometimes can’t pass us safely so we increase your journey time by a couple of minutes. But couldn’t you at least try to see the broader picture?

Every person who chooses to make a journey by bicycle instead of car is one less car in that traffic jam in front of you, it’s one less person in the queue at the petrol station, one less car taking that last place in the car park . . .

Chris Day, Yarnton