THE anonymous letter regarding cyclists on Poppleton Road was gross exaggeration (Letters, November 10).

Let’s get real about cyclists: they are your parents, your children, your grandchildren, your colleagues and your pub mates just trying to get places safely and sensibly. This would be a mean, unhappy, unhealthy, polluted, gridlocked city without them.

Bad behaviour needs tackling. But I ride that route almost every day, and at different times, and have never, ever, seen the cyclist behaviour your nameless correspondent claims.

I usually use the bike path described, but only the part which is well designed. Generally, York’s bike paths are great, but there are reasons for sometimes not using them: such as broken glass, thorn cuttings or simply too many pedestrians. It is cyclists’ absolute right to ride on the road if they choose to, and it is their obligation, wherever they ride, to do so considerately.

Unless they think there will be major personal repercussions people should have the decency to put their name to what they write. Especially when talking in the kind of reckless terms which put cyclists’ lives in increased danger from hotheads whose world vision is at the Jeremy Clarkson level or below.

Jim McGurn, Chief Executive, Get Cycling CiC, Hospital Fields Road, York.