• IT is tragic that a serious injury to a child should herald the introduction of silent, motorised, electric bikes and e-scooters on to Britain’s roads and pavements.

We learn that a girl of five might be scarred for life after her head was struck by a youth riding a dirt bike.

This tragedy needs to be added to the history books. It offsets the claim that such vehicles will solve all our transport problems.

Interestingly the same type of tragedy had occurred in 1896 and had marked the first time in Britain that a child had been hurt by a motorised vehicle.

During the first London to Brighton Rally in 1896, a so-called “emancipation of the motorist day”, a girl of 10 called Mary Dyer had her skull fractured by the driver of a Duryea, an early motor car described as sporting an “impulse engine”.

She was taken to the newly-opened Crawley cottage hospital and fortunately recovered. Contemporary newspapers played down the incident as it distracted from the new freedoms to drive and because it was claimed that nobody was to blame.

ANTONY PORTER, W9