Readers' letters - April 13

With self-drive cars being introduced to the roads next year, I see a terrible future.

When Britain won the war, it was largely a caring nation, and the bicycle played a significant part – it got people to work, and out into the countryside, and along with rationing, and living off the land, Britain was healthy, if not well-off.

Then along came the car.

Today everything is in crisis: thousands suffer and die from air pollution; £12bn is needed to fix our roads; the worst congested in Europe, they will cost the UK economy more than £300bn over the next 16 years; close to 200,000 vehicles crash every year; our NHS, police, prisons, and schools can’t cope; disability benefits have been cut; and the misery goes on.

Put Britain under a microscope, and it would show a nation plagued with stress. With 20mph speed limits to try and calm things down, 84 per cent of drivers exceed them – time is money.

I ride a bicycle, and at age 68, I doubt whether self-drive cars will trouble me, but with millions of parked vehicles blocking our roads, and two million potholes to have to ‘swerve’ around, they will surely become a problem.

The best way to test their safety would surely be to have them follow the Manchester to Blackpool charity cycle ride.

If Britain doesn’t return to its caring way of life soon, given global warming and the crisis in the Middle East, at some point, Britain, if not the world, will surely witness far worse than what the Second World War ‘threw’ at us!

Allan Ramsay

Radcliffe