Sir – I am sure your correspondent Philip Cresswell rides a genuinely eco-friendly, quiet-running, electric machine, and that he is a considerate motorcyclist (Letters, July 31). But the motorcyclists I encounter on our roads don’t and aren’t.

They come from behind me as I drive nicely within the speed limit like harpies from hell, scare the life out of me, and disappear at howling speed into the distance. It is frighteningly distracting, and they are as dangerous to others as a driver using a mobile phone.

Many a concert is ruined by the revving of their engines — how they love the sound of their own exhausts, these, usually, young men — and they use our country lanes as their racetracks. What do they cost the NHS in fractured limbs and worse?

The police can’t catch them as they weave their way at vast speed between traffic. The accident statistics are alarming.

Why on earth do we allow these deadly machines to be licensed in the first place? Is someone afraid of being thought a spoiler of this sport — an exciting but highly dangerous form of transport played out on our public roads?

Let us take a lesson from Mr Creswell, and permit only quiet-engined, speed-restricted, eco-friendly versions? I might then support his campaign. He may reply to this, perhaps using the phrase the actions of a few reflecting on others.

I lost a friend to a motorbike accident. He was sensible and middle-aged. His bike was his only treat to himself. He died in pain but relatively quickly. Others, including his wife and children, continue to bear the burden of his death.

Richard Wilson, Oxford