Writing to your MEP

I wrote this letter to my MEPs yesterday. To my suprise they have all answered within 24 hours. Some in great detail about specific proposals and research into safety currently in progress. A littlr sad then to compare that UK MPs are having to fight to save essential services form the Con-Dem Government rather than better the lives of residents...

Monday 7 February 2011

Dear Jean Lambert, Sarah Ludford, Charles Tannock, MarinaYannakoudakis, Gerard Batten, Claude Moraes, Mary Honeyball and SyedKamall,

It's nearly two years since Eilidh was run over by a truck that failedto see her. Her mum Heather has been working with their local Member ofEuropean Parliament to try and get an EU declaration signed to get HGVsfitted with sensors and cameras to remove their blind spot. 4000 people, mostly unprotected road users such as cyclists,motorcyclists and pedestrians, are killed each year in Europe becauseof HGV blind spots. As a keen cyclist (I commute by bike and cycle for pleasure)I see thedangers of this blindspot daily. If HGVs are the way in which we chooseto deliver goods in the centre of our busy towns, then they mustn't make them any more dangerous than neccessary.

I am 38 years old I havelost 2 friends to illness, but 2 others have been crushed by HGV's whodidn't see them (one died in a car). This declaration needs to be signed to be signed by half of the 736MEPs before it lapses on Wed 16th Feb

Yours sincerely,

XXX

WTF (reprise)

If it is not only appalling that the life of a cyclist, killed by a driver who was clearly in the wrong, is worth next to nothing (Is a £200 fine and three points on your licence an appropriate punishment for killing a cyclist on the road).

We now get the indignity of this

Apparently the fact that Matthew's parents didn't make him wear a helmet, is mitigation for the following behaviour...

"Weaving was found guilty by a jury in December 2008 of manslaughter and other charges after the court heard he had driven at 83mph in a 45mph zone in Connecticut. His record showed that he had been arrested on five previous occasions for drunk driving."

...and it's the lack of a helmet that is causing the mental anguish?