I have personally witnessed three such incidents in the last month and have also observed that the problem is being compounded by the illegal parking.

All manner of vehicles including large commercial trucks and vans routinely park on the zig zag lines six days a week while visiting the bakery.

This often obscures the view of traffic approaching from the town and when pedestrians are four or five paces onto the crossing, motorists have little or no time to react.

This unsafe and illegal practice carries a £60 fine and three points on the offender's licence but the law is not being enforced.

I recently spoke to a traffic warden voicing my concerns and he explained that they have no powers to deal with this issue as the police have retained this section of the law as part of their remit.

So there it is, the wardens are powerless to act and the authorities don't seem bothered, meanwhile pedestrians continue to run the gauntlet until a serious accident prompts the powers that be to stop sitting on their hands and take action.

Nigel Pleasants
via email



I appreciate your cartoonist's sense of humour (letters last week) but that crossing is no joke and I fully agree with Ms Rawes.

My wife and I separately and on several occasions have had 'near misses.'

In my view this type of crossing is not suitable for a busy road with a dual carriageway section where the nearside driver and the pedestrian can both be unsighted because of the other lanes of traffic.

The crossing should have pedestrian operated traffic lights as in the case of the other corssings in the High Street on this same main route.

It is a busy enough crossing and is used by many school children.

Raymond Hobbs
Oakham