Sir – It is disconcerting how readily people divide themselves into tribes — ‘cyclists’, ‘pedestrians’, ‘car drivers’ — when in fact almost everyone uses different forms of transport depending on their journey.

Dr Okely (Letters, May 12) suggests that new laws to protect pedestrians from dangerous cyclists are needed, apparently based on one incident of which he (she?) is aware. In fact collisions between cyclists and pedestrians are vanishingly rare not least because when they do occur, the cyclist is as likely to be injured as the pedestrian, as my teenage daughter discovered when a group of pedestrians stepped off the pavement into the road in front of her last year.

In over 40 years of cycling the only time I have ever been in collision with a cyclist is when a jogger ran off the pavement and hit me square on, but I do not suggest that new laws are needed to protect cyclists from racetrack pedestrians. Is it right to take up parliamentary time enacting a new law to prevent a problem which hardly exists and which is covered effectively by existing legislation? I am a pedestrian more than I am a cyclist or car driver, but from a public safety point of view it is absolutely clear that pedestrians and cyclists can mix safely whereas cars and trucks are a danger to any other road users. In many other European cities this is how things are organised and people are used to it and, in practice, there are several streets in Oxford which are shared in this way (New Inn Hall Street, North Parade, Cornmarket Street and Queen Street at some times) with no problem.

Anything which pushes cyclists on to the roads, without proper separation, will lead to more death and injury. Surely that is more important than tribal feelings.

David Dixon, Oxford