Dear LPG, 

I read something recently on your pages which really resonated with me because I find myself in exactly the same situation as SG who has spent the last four years taking a grandchild to and from school, and while her memories of getting her 11-year-old street-ready for getting to school on her own years earlier made me smile, it also reminded me of just how much more dangerous our streets are these days with all those electric scooters adding to the problems.

I spent some of my working life driving delivery vans and that is a perfect way to see all the really frightening things that pedestrians do and being on the road so much meant that I was required to keep up to date with that all-too-often forgotten little document the Highway Code.  Did you know that rules 1 to 35 are there specifically for pedestrians?

We have all heard about the amendments that have been made to it recently where the only thing the news offers is that the pedestrian has the ultimate right of way.  I remember seeing too many instances where that priority did not protect the younger road walker and any professional driver knows that the most unpredictable street users are children and animals, with cyclists being right up there too. 

I believe that primary schools should add a few dedicated ‘being a responsible pedestrian’ lessons to the curriculum for year 6 children so that they leave for secondary school with the knowledge that even though they should be safe on our streets whatever they want to get up to, needs to be mixed with just how dangerous it can be out there; especially on their way home from school when we have all seen the shenanigans they can get up to once they have spent the day with all those friends that they want to appear cooler and cleverer than.

But while we are waiting for that to happen, we grandparents might just come in handy if we can bring the subject up and remind them that they do not have a divine right to be able to take the usual risks in the secure knowledge that they will get away with their lives.  

I have found an online version of the highway code which, to my mind, makes for really odd reading in places, and chatting some of it through with my grandchild might just have at least got her thinking a bit… Perhaps that is something that we grandparents who live close enough might be able to do while the government are sorting out the official lessons…  

DT, Lewisham

DT shares the online highway code while LPG adds a few more bits of information…

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