• ON Wednesday September 6 while travelling home by bus toward Swiss Cottage along the Finchley Road we witnessed the tragic aftermath of a major road accident involving a large vehicle with a seriously injured pedestrian lying on the ground by a pelican crossing and being attended by paramedics with traffic police in attendance.

Horribly this is an almost exact repeat of another such accident involving a pedestrian and a heavy vehicle on another pelican crossing further up the Finchley Road (opposite the old post office) within the last year or so.

Finchley Road carries three lanes of traffic on either side. It is a very wide road. All the pelican crossing lights stay green for much too short a time to allow pedestrians to easily complete crossing the road.

It is particularly difficult for the elderly and disabled and people with small children and pushchairs to get across the road from one side to another before the traffic lights turn to green for vehicles.

Surely it must be time for the relevant authorities to examine the safety of these crossings, take stock, and build safer pedestrian crossings on Finchley Road.

Marylebone Road and Exhibition Road in Kensington, both main arteries for traffic in London, allow more space and time for pedestrians by having a central, railed, island and separate sets of lights for each side of the road. To avoid further awful accidents like this, it must make sense on Finchley Road to do the same for the residents of Camden.

GAIL BRACKETT
Howitt Road, NW3