From Giles Pepperell

The following letter was sent to Sadiq Khan MP, and copied to the News: SIR. I have now moved out of the Borough of Wandsworth and your constituency.

I would like to raise a few final issues with you, as I notice you have become involved with the call for traffic calming in Dalebury Road following the death of the 10-year-old girl.

There is no need for traffic calming measures in these roads, there is a need for them to be repaired as they are woefully under-maintained.

While the death is tragic, has it been determined that the driver of the vehicle was at fault? Or did the girl not look? Or run out from between parked cars leaving the driver no chance?

If parents allow children to walk to and from school, they have a responsibility to teach them road sense and how to cross the road properly.

The ignorance and bad attitude that pervades the majority of pedestrians (and cyclists jumping red lights and ignoring other traffic signs, riding on the pavements, the wrong way down one way streets or with no lights) nowadays is astonishing (I've even seen them do it past police officers and PCSOs) and yet the answer always seems to be anti-driver measures - this is unacceptable.

Road humps (now thankfully on their way out in a lot of boroughs) and the other measures installed are a waste of money.

I believe that for these so-called road improvements (calling them improvements does not make them such) the money is borrowed from Wandsworth Council reserves (rather than the highway maintenance budget) and this money is paid back annually for a period of 20 years at the rate of a ninth of what was borrowed - so if £1,000 was used from reserves, £111.11 is paid back annually for 20 years, making a total repayment of £2222.22. I fail to see how this is good use of what is essentially council tax payers' money.

The argument that "if just one life is saved" is nonsense if 500,000 people have to be inconvenienced for it. It is also immeasurable and certainly not guaranteeable.

If you watch today's attendees of Ernest Bevin College upon arrival and leaving the college you will see that the Green Cross Code as prescribed at the beginning of the Highway Code is a mystery to the majority of them. Most urban schools are the same in my experience. Isn't there something called "citizenship" taught at schools nowadays? A socially responsible attitude towards road safety seems to be missing from the syllabus.

Everyone has a responsibility towards road safety, not just vehicle drivers. I regularly see pedestrians with pushchairs bowl out in front of traffic without even looking, pushchair first!

These unnecessary raised junction installations have a lot to do with encouraging pedestrians in general to step out by making them think that there is some sort of right of way when none exists. Pedestrians routinely ignore the illuminated red and green man signs to check whether it is safe to cross or indeed their turn.

I know what the Green Cross Code is and I use it and I believe that everyone else should do too.

Giles Pepperell, formerly of Crockerton Road, via e-mail