Points: Letters of the week, October 12

Obstacle course

A couple of points in reply to Ian Snowden (“Caught on camera”, Points, last week). Filtering past stationary traffic on the left on a bicycle is not illegal. Second, cyclists sometimes choose not to use cycle lanes that are poorly maintained, potholed and full of broken glass and so on, and decide it’s safer to ride on the road.

Chris Day, Yarnton, Oxfordshire

Registering doubt

The consequences of cycle registration should be thought through properly. Apart from the huge cost, you would see a sharp reduction in cycling, leading to an increase in car use, pollution, deaths from accidents and, of course, traffic jams.

Chris Denham, Canterbury

Faulty reasoning

Snowden trots out the usual justifications for bad driver behaviour but assumes that motorists and cyclists are equally at fault for accidents. If a cyclist acts like an idiot, it is usually the cyclist who dies. If a driver acts like an idiot, it is usually the cyclist who dies. Notice a pattern?

Adrian Pope, Harpford, Devon

Search for and buy your next car on driving.co.uk

Hole lot of trouble

I have just seen a television advertisement for one of the motoring organisations claiming the incorrect fuel is put into a car every four minutes on average, which I calculate to be more than 130,000 times a year. Surely it is time car makers and fuel providers got together to devise a method to prevent this.

Fred Sommers, Eversley, Hampshire

The heart grows Honda

Very occasionally, and with some reluctance, it would seem, you mention Honda. We are now driving our ninth Honda. These are reliable, hardly ever needing a mechanic, and when sold can achieve a good price. Their designs have always been excellent (they need to be: my husband is an architect).

Hazel Banting, East Molesey, southwest London

Editor’s note: see Jeremy Clarkson’s Honda Civic Tourer review from the same issue.

Four wheels, eight legs

BLS of Brighton (Car Clinic, last week) should not be so quick to eradicate spiders from his cars: they have their uses. Arriving late in the Highlands for a walking trip this summer, I decided not to pitch my tent but to sleep in the car. A window was left open for ventilation — and, unfortunately, to give early-morning access to the infamous midges. But these dawn visitors hadn’t foreseen my in-car companions: lurking spiders from bags of garden rubbish left in the car the previous week had made preparations for their breakfast — the arachnid equivalent of a “full Scottish”.

Nigel Ward, Symington, Ayrshire

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