In response to Dr DeMarco’s letter in the October issue [“New health promotion idea: Discourage car travel.” BCMJ 2012;54:383 [10]], road cycling is much more dangerous than motoring, as a simple search will demonstrate. Additionally, we don’t all live in Whistler—road conditions, type of traffic, distance of commute, and weather conditions are vastly different in northern BC. 

Personally, I have a congenital heart condition, which makes cycling impossible, and large numbers of the older population have respiratory and cardiovascular conditions that ex­clude them from this activity. Are we all to be mere cannon fodder in Dr DeMarco’s utopian war on progress?
—J.F.M. Oosthuizen, MD
Williams Lake