IT was with a great deal of interest that I read the remarks of County Councillor Richard Toon (Letters, July 2), in which he suggested that Hyndburn councillor Adrian Shurmer has no interest in reducing tragedy and suffering from road accidents.

Coun Shurmer, whose lifelong career was doing just that, has not stopped anything and is as concerned as ever. Hyndburn Council has suspended some traffic-calming schemes pending a thorough review.

I do not believe anyone takes issue with the fact that traffic is a problem and we need to reduce accidents. It is the way that the action is taken and money spent which is at issue.

If the traffic-calming I am aware of was the result of "well-thought-out road safety schemes," then I really cannot see the point in the thinking process. Do the experts who plan these schemes ever look at anything other than a piece of paper with lines showing the roads?

Do they ever visit the site at different times of day and talk to residents and road users? To one who is subjected to the results of 'expert action,' it would seem not. In almost everyone's eyes, the car user is seen as the big bad villain of the piece, when he really is just Joe Public trying to scratch a living and getting thoroughly fed up with being fleeced and subjected to legalised robbery at every opportunity when trying to do that.

It is time that the heads were pulled out of the sand to look in depth for permanent solutions to a problem which is only going to get worse. I would love to be able to walk to work, or use public transport, but, in my case, my work precludes this.

My wife is able to use public transport but has been spat on by school children and subjected to language even I hadn't heard and frequently is unable to get on the bus which drives past full of the same children whose school buses have been withdrawn by the authorities.

I do not agree with all of Coun Shurmer's views, but at least I have spoken to and seen him looking at the problem areas. I suggest that County Coun Toon speaks to the leader of the council in Hyndburn and makes sure he attends the forthcoming review meeting in Hyndburn on traffic-calming, where he can brief us all on how some of these schemes were planned.

PHILIP STOREY, Warwick Avenue, Clayton-le-Moors.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.