E-scooters should not block pavements

Please can people who use e-scooters park them properly so that they do not block the pavements?

Pavements in some places are narrow and easily blocked.

A little bit of common sense and thinking of others goes a long way towards creating a civilised city. Sarah Riddle

By email

Whilst I share Mike Walton’s wish to reduce road deaths (“Let’s act on road deaths as well”, 2/9/21), I do not share his optimism that it can be achieved.

A number of studies of road accidents have taken place, and the most telling of these was the one that identified the driver’s perspective; that every journey is a continuous assessment of risk.

That study included a look back at some previous studies and concluded that the lower the inherent risk, the lower the base level of concentration of the driver.

This would explain why an American study discovered that at the time when only a third of American cars had air bags, just over half of the accidents involved a car with air bags.

Drivers with more protection took more chances. Compulsory seat belts, universal adoption of air bags and crumple zones, side impact protection and anti-lock brakes have all been introduced since, and drivers are reminded by advertising hype that they are perfectly safe as a result, so that the continuous risk assessment in a journey starts with an exaggerated assumption of drivers’ low risks to themselves.

Similarly, cyclists wearing helmets are more of a danger to themselves on a journey than cyclists without a helmet.

I am old enough to remember when seat belts were only optional extras in the most expensive cars and there were just two speed limits, 30mph in built-up areas and the top speed of the car being driven everywhere else.

Drivers learned to read the road and conditions, some areas such as Dorset used Recommended Speed signs on dangerous roads to assist drivers unfamiliar with the road, and driving lessons focused on not driving at an inappropriate speed for the conditions.

Then the national maximum was introduced to limit the use of motorways as speed trial roads. 70mph was the speed chosen by the minister for transport who didn’t drive and arbitrarily used the top speed of the most common car on the road at the time.

That was soon followed by lower speed limits on roads with high accident rates, enforced by the police. Most of this was sensibly enforced.

The real change in speed awareness came with the introduction of speed cameras.

No longer was inappropriate speed taught, it was now a requirement to keep to the limit or be fined.

Some roads had speed limits reduced when the fixed camera was installed to maximise the income from fines.

This has produced a generation of motorists who treat speed limits as absolutes, and the ability to decide whether the limit is sensible as conditions change has been lost. If the sign says 40mph then that is the speed many think is appropriate, whether it is a dry day in summer

(when a higher limit would often be just as safe) or a misty frosty night in late autumn (when the limit shown would be too high for the conditions). Mr Walton appears to follow the line that speed limits are absolutes in his letter.

Many years ago, a broadsheet columnist produced a tongue in cheek but thought provoking item describing the safest car on the road.

It had drum brakes, no seat belts, no air bags, no crumple zones, cardboard bumpers, bald tyres and a spike in the centre of the steering wheel so that the driver would be very concerned about roadholding in slippery conditions, and either be impaled or thrown through the windscreen in the event of an accident.

The argument was that if the driver considered being in the car as more dangerous than being outside it, extreme care would be taken and there would be almost no accidents.

Of course, that scenario will never happen now. No driver is going to opt for a car with a lower safety rating than the one they currently drive. Because driver safety is now so important, drivers will feel cocooned enough to take a risk now and again, and occasional fatalities will continue to be the result.

JF Warren Oldfield Park