YOU get one public figure, the Coroner, stating his support for traffic-calming (LET, June 22) and the rest all come out stating how justified they are in spending hundreds of thousands of pounds and how wrong it's all been to lambast them with letters in the Press, etc.

Pro-traffic-calmers are now whooping for joy over what the Coroner said (and I am not against 20mph speed limits), but let's see what they are so happy about.

Coun Ian Ormerod, of Hyndburn, says: "We can hold our heads up proud." But here's proof of just how ridiculous some councillors and their cause can be. I have compiled a list of factual nonsense which would not look out of place in a Monty Python programme:

Drivers are having accidents - colliding with hazards - so let's build hundreds more in the middle of the road! Some drivers are idiots, so let's narrow the road and bring them closer together - and to the responsible road users as well.

Let's build cycle lanes on footpaths then prosecute cyclists for riding on the footpath.

At a traffic light junction, we'll mark two lanes for left-turning traffic but then, immediately around the corner, put an island in the middle of the road and narrow the road down to one lane only!

We'll prosecute traders for placing A-boards on footpaths, but then erect thousands of 'black' metal posts on practically every other footpath.

A drugged-up driver is killed in an 80mph police chase and goes through a T-junction without stopping and collides with a vehicle on the main road. To stop this happening again, a mini-roundabout should be built at the same junction on the grounds that 'speed kills.'

Unauthorised permission is given for any 'long vehicle' to disobey a mandatory sign by going over the top of mini-roundabouts - but no one knows how to define a long vehicle.

Let's do nothing to analyse road traffic accidents except to immediately throw a hazard at a hazard.

I think the Coroner should reflect on the position in which he will find himself in the future when an 'idiot' or a careless - even normal - driver kills someone having travelled too fast through a deliberately-narrowed roadway.

I suggest that when a Coroner publicly states his support for carte blanche council measures and believes the answer towards preventing accidents is just to build traffic-calming measures, then he fails to think out the whole problem and compromises his own position.

ADRIAN SHURMER (retired police officer) Lyndon Avenue, Great Harwood.

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