Take care on winter roads

We love printing your photographs of the first fall of snow in the community.

Kids having snowball fights, your first snowman of the winter and picturesque shots of snow-sprinkled countryside.

What we don’t want to cover is car crashes, accidents or tailbacks stretching into the distance.

Snowfall should not come as a surprise, yet every year the first snow of winter inevitably brings problems on our roads.

Here in the North East, lengthy tailbacks formed on one of the region’s main roads following an accident on the A19. Undoubtedly there will be more wintry weather to come.

So drivers would be well advised to follow the guidance of motoring organisations and the emergency services who urge drivers to slow down and keep their distance.

Yet even as the traffic crawled along the A19 as a result of Friday’s early morning multi-vehicle collision, some drivers seemed oblivious to their own safety and those of other road-users.

Not only were they seen to edge closer and closer to the car in front, giving themselves hardly any braking space, they were also observed weaving from lane to lane and back again, in the vain hope of getting a bit further up the road quicker than anyone else.

Worse still, there were people crawling along in vehicles still covered in snow. How they could see where they were going was a complete mystery.

It’s important that people use a bit of common sense when they get behind the wheel of a car – especially when the weather takes a turn for the worse.

Like we say, we’d rather be publishing your pictures of snow covered rooftops, than cars on their roofs.

Please drive carefully.