Sir, – Silence, one of the bicycle’s chief virtues, can also be one of its principal hazards. The same was true of trolley-buses in the town where I grew up, and may yet prove to be a drawback of the electric car.
When I was a child, my friends and I went through a stage of fixing a folded cigarette packet where our bicycle spokes would deflect it as they rotated, producing a roaring sound. We were thus able to pretend that we were riding motorbikes. Maybe some enterprising person could come up with a modern (and more permanent) equivalent. – Yours, etc,
PAUL GRIFFIN,
St Helens,
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Merseyside.