The first person to be killed by a motor vehicle was pedestrian Bridget Driscol, way back in 1896. Since then, more than 30 million people have been killed or seriously injured on UK
roads.

Some will have brought it on themselves by being so disrespectful of the Highway Code, but you can be sure that most will have been totally innocent – children, cyclists, horse riders, pedestrians and passengers.

So for their sake the question is: will the winning trend continue, or is it just a blip?

Whatever, figures on paper can always be made to look better than what the situation actually is. As a cyclist I will get little confidence from this casualty reduction, for every time I go out on my bicycle (which, because of the price of petrol, and other rising costs, I'm having to do more and more, even in the pouring rain) I see disturbingly huge numbers of drivers ignoring the mobile phone ban. All potential killers are they not?

The worst of them are the texters. Not even looking where they're going - head tilting forward, eyes and brain totally engrossed in anything and everything other than safe and responsible driving.

Anyone who cycles on the road will regularly be in the firing line of these brain-dead "terrorists". Is it any wonder then that we get cyclists on pavements?

Is it any wonder that millions of grown-ups won't cycle and won't let their children cycle? So what chance the wars on congestion and carbon reduction?

What we need now, especially with record oil prices making cycling a necessity for many, is much tougher penalties for drivers who ignore the mobile phone ban. Let's also see the Government recognise
motor vehicles and mobile phones for the potential instruments of death that they are, and as with knives and guns, let's see them confiscated when they are used other than in accordance with the rules of the road.

Aren't untaxed vehicles confiscated? Does a vehicle without a tax disc make it any more of a killer than a vehicle driven at excessive speed or by a 'mobile menace', or under the influence of alcohol or drugs?


People enjoy moor without spilling blood


From: Jim Davenport, Chapel Row, Copt Hewick, Ripon.

SO Michael Booth (Yorkshire Post, June 28) believes that the difference between grouse shooters and the rest of the users of Ilkley Moor is that the shooters will be making a financial contribution to Bradford Council.

Presumably then, the walkers, orienteers, climbers, cyclists, bird-watchers, nature lovers, photographers and picnickers that were out enjoying the moors this weekend are all non taxpayers.

No, Mr Booth, the real difference is that all these disparate groups were enjoying the moor and tolerating each other in a morally and socially acceptable manner.

Blasting birds out of the sky for some sort of sadistic pleasure by a few bloodthirsty bully boys probably does not fit very comfortably into the mind set of other moor users. That is the real difference, Mr Booth.


Soundbites aren't enough to change the airport


From: Michael Ross, Weeton Lane, Dunkeswick, North Yorkshire.

YOUR article about improvements to Leeds Bradford Airport (Yorkshire Post, July 1), and accompanying quotes from Tony Hallwood, would be of some interest if we had not heard it all before, and more, for
the last 40 years to my knowledge.

I don't know what Mr Hallwood has been doing in the two months since his recent installation as Commercial and Aviation Development Director at LBA, but he has certainly not researched any of the history.

Had he done so, he would realise most Yorkshire folk are not so stupid as to be taken in by his "give Yorkshire an airport it can be proud of'" and "fast growing, in the top 10 per cent of UK airports" etc, etc.

These are only soundbites used where there is very little else to say.

If, however, they want to attract the business community, and the major airlines, then they have to make radical changes starting with the Mickey Mouse culture that pervades the whole place.

The owners of LBA have some major decisions to make. The first one might be to take the "International" out of its title. Any airport that feels it needs "International" in its title obviously is not, unless of course it has a separate domestic one elsewhere.