Letter: Rules save lives, Sir Desmond

SIR – Further to your article on Sir Desmond's speech in the Commons on Covid restrictions in which he raised the subject of road deaths (A&T, 17th December), he appears unaware that the topic proves the opposite of the case he is seeking to make.

Since the 1960s UK road deaths per passenger-mile have fallen by over 90%.

How has this been brought about? By restricting the freedoms of drivers, most notably to drive when drunk or at excessive speed and banning the use of unsafe cars through MoTs.

Manufacturers' freedom of choice is restricted by imposing increasingly severe rules on car design to produce safer vehicles.

The ways all of us use the roads are increasingly constrained by bike lanes, pelican crossings, traffic lights and the like, and the design of roads themselves are subject to strong rules to make them safer to use.

Many tens of thousands of lives have been saved on the roads by the imposition of rules. Indeed rules govern almost all aspects of modern civilised life.

As one who has voted Tory all my life, I fear that I find the stupidity of Sir Desmond's arguments totally intolerable.

Prof. Jonathan Brown,
Milford