Road Safety Concerns After Two Fatalities

Yesterday a motorcyclist died at around 7.50am after a collision on the A4 Bath Road in Calcot. I involved a blue Renault Clio and a black Yamaha TRX motorcycle. The driver of the motorcycle, believed to be a man in his late thirties, was pronounced dead at the scene, while the driver of the car was taken to the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading.

Meanwhile, the M4 was closed eastbound between junction six (Slough) and junction five (Langley) following another fatal road accident earlier. Just before 3am, two articulated lorries collided on the motorway and the driver of one of the lorries, a 44-year-old man, was declared dead at the scene.

The week before a cyclist was fighting for his life in hospital after a crash that caused major delays when the A322 had to be closed. The 79-year-old cyclist was in a collision involving three cars on Bagshot Road near the Coral Reef roundabout.

Road safety should be a priority, but something seems to be going wrong here. Unfortunately the message the ConDems are giving by cutting speed cameras is the opposite. George Monbiot says "There is and has never been a war on the motorist. Motorists are handled more gently than anyone else: they are the only people who can expect to get away with breaking the law on almost all occasions. A war is an event in which people are injured and killed. Which circumstance most closely resembles one: an occasional £60 fine, or the daily carnage on the roads?"

About 120 children killed in Britain every year: 120 families plunged into lifelong grief. And its tabloid myth that speed cameras are unpopular. "The most recent poll whose results I can find shows that 82% of British people surveyed approve of them, and that the percentage has been rising."