Author Peter Inson, Cycling comment

Gazette: County council has sent threatening letters to residents telling them to remove four inch white posts on the verge which have been put there to stop people driving on the grassy bit..Residence, Peter Inson,left, and Chris Gover, at East Road,East Mersea..

It was particularly depressing to read in the Gazette and Standard last month about an attack on a cyclist by a motorist.

When pedestrians and cyclists make mistakes they themselves are more likely to be harmed; when a motorist makes a mistake it is usually others who suffer.

The safety of others should be uppermost in the minds of motorists.

In the air, at sea and on the tracks there are serious expectations: train drivers who pass a light at danger do not drive again, airline pilots and sea captains know that they are as likely to die as their passengers should they make a serious error of judgement.

Gazette: ragout of story about a cyclist being driven at , December 20 2017

READ MORE: Driver rapped after punching cyclist in road bust up

Motorists need only strike a pedestrian at 13mph to kill them.

Fewer than half the people killed in road traffic accidents are drivers or occupants of vehicles; the others are pedestrians or cyclists.

I began cycling to school, at the age of twelve, along the A12, from Romford to Wanstead. Later I rode from Upminster to Barking and from Fenchurch Street to Bloomsbury.

In West London my route to work took me across the Hangar Lane gyratory where the A40 meets the North Circular.

Somehow I learnt to anticipate and avoid danger.

Much later, I joined The Institute of Advanced Motorists which provides a high level of training which I would recommend to other drivers.

There were two accidents, the first at fourteen, of my own causing, resulting in a smashed front wheel and a busted tooth.

In my late fifties I was knocked from my bike in Harrow by a motorist turning out of a side road into my path on a main road, smashing my front wheel and just missing my leg.

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Now my cycling is confined to the island of Mersea, but even here I see things to which William Bramhill, a spokesman for Colchester Cycling Campaign has referred; drivers with a greater interest in their phones or lap-tops than the safety of other road users, and drivers who obviously consider their journeys of greater importance than other peoples’.

3,500 deaths per year on our roads and several times that number of victims seriously injured; surely there are remedies that we should at least consider.

Firstly, were able bodied people expected first to pass a cycling proficiency test in order to obtain a provisional licence they would learn quickly how to anticipate and avoid accidents and they would learn what it is to be vulnerable on the road.

Then we should demand greater consideration from drivers.

Next, when accidents occur, on the railways, at sea or in the air, there are enquiries to determine their causes.

Those who were responsible for flying the planes, driving the trains or navigating the ships are suspended from duty pending an enquiry.

In this way anyone who might have been responsible for the accident will not allowed to drive trains, navigate ships or fly planes until it has been established that they were not responsible.

I am sure that we would find the standard of driving on our roads vastly improved if motorists knew that, following involvement in an accident, their licences would be suspended pending an enquiry.

Thirdly, this incident in Colchester resulted in convictions for actual bodily harm and assault, as well as dangerous driving.

With convictions such as these there would be no prospect of anyone obtaining a shotgun licence or a firearms certificate.

Yet far, far more people are killed with cars than with guns so perhaps we should ask why a violent individual should ever be allowed to get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle.

Each of these measures, I believe, would serve to remind us of the responsibilities we undertake when we drive and would make it easier to keep from the road individuals who should not be driving.

Peter Inson is a writer of fiction and text books. He can be found at www.peterinson.net and heard regularly on BBC Radio Essex.

80 mini-stories to encourage reading - free - plus blog at http://www.peterinson.net/

Contact: Tel: 01206 382010 Mob: 07766 595 324.

"Swallows," 6 Dormy Houses, East Road, East Mersea, Colchester, Essex CO5 8UW UK