SIR - I was born in 1948. While virtually all today’s 8-year-olds, (other than the most disadvantaged and disabled), will more than likely get a smartphone for Christmas, I got a bicycle. And, where pretty much everyone with a smartphone today, can ‘navigate’ the so called super-highway, I was (in 1956),‘navigating’ the traffic free/exhaust-free streets of Radcliffe, (Lancashire back then). Indeed, on one occasion, along with two pals, I attempted to cycle to Blackpool, to visit an aunty.

Hence, might I ask: “Where I was a child ‘addicted’ to cycling, (indeed still am), how many of today’s 8-year-olds, are ‘addicted’ to computer games, and snapchat, and suffering from a mental illness because of it?"

Given that global warming is now dictating that, the human race, (7.8 billion) needs to reduce its carbon footprint - sooner rather than later, i.e. at super-fast, if not ultra-fast speed, and, both in the Third World and the EU, the bicycle is the first step out of poverty for millions of people, why doesn’t the UK now have a zero tolerance application, with regard to lawless drivers, and also, much better protection for cyclists?

For in effect aren’t cyclists on the front-line, in both the war against climate change, and the war against poverty?

Given that the human race (7.8 billion) is now under a far greater threat from climate change than it was from both world wars put together: if the UK is to face rationing, (from a no-deal) and medicines and medical care are at the top of the list, (to be fair), shouldn’t injured cyclists be the first-in-line for treatment, along with children, and women with life-limiting illnesses, whereby drivers should bring up the rear?

And again - to be fair - shouldn’t drivers with the biggest carbon footprint, and the biggest ‘bellies’, be treated much like the homeless, and many war veterans, are treated today?

That is, like lepers.

Allan Ramsay, Radcliffe Moor Road, Radcliffe