PAUL Madeley, the driver who was cleared of killing 15-year-old Natalie Pickwick Jones after he drove his car at close to twice the 30mph speed limit - in the dark - said in his defence: "Until I saw Natalie I did not know there were any pedestrians about. She came out of nowhere."

If Natalie could speak she might say it was he who 'came out of nowhere'.

Even if she did 'come out of nowhere', isn't that the nature of pedestrians, especially children, that they can appear from anywhere, at any time, for any reason? Also, isn't it the case that such a cautionary message has been clearly advertised for long enough and in any number of ways?

Sadly for Natalie and her family, the 'Kill your speed, not a child' campaign, speed cameras and traffic-calming measures clearly didn't do the job they were intended to do. And in allowing Mr Madeley to go unpunished, neither did the court.

How could he leave the court without any form of punishment, especially when he accepted the prosecution's contention that his driving was 'dangerous'?

The circumstances surrounding Natalie's death and the subsequent - in my view - unsatisfactory outcome to the court case, is not a one-off; it's one of many.

Some 4,000 children are killed or seriously injured on our roads every year yet, despite their innocence, the 'punishment' invariably rests with them and their families. Possibly this is one of the reasons why Britain has some of the worst child road casualty figures in Europe.

Earlier this year Jim Knight, MP for South Dorset, sickened by the deaths of three of this constituents and the drivers involved escaping with nothing more than fines, asked for an offence of motor vehicle manslaughter to be made law, bringing Britain's road traffic laws in line with most other European countries.

Anyone who values the life of their child has nothing to lose by asking his own MP to support him - and everything to lose if they don't. For unless we have such a sentence available to the courts you can be sure that Natalie Pickwick Jones won't be the last innocent child to be killed on our roads.

ROAD VICTIM