One week after a pedestrian was run down and killed the flowers at the site have grown but there is still no police sign appealing for witnesses.
From the local weekly Guardian, which has extensive coverage and some graphic photographs:
THE man who tried to save the life of pedestrian Joe Sheridan, killed in Lea Bridge Road last Thursday, has witnessed four other accidents in the same place in six years.His wife's father was also knocked down on a nearby zebra crossing. Malcolm Durrant, landlord of the Hare and Hounds pub in Lea Bridge Road, Leyton, said: "One time I saw a man flying through the air. And in the 1990s a lorry clipped a cyclist's back wheel and killed her instantly. Some drivers are oblivious. The road is this bad because it's so long and so straight. They should have some sort of chicane system like in countries abroad."
The solutions aren't hard to seek. The entire length of Lea Bridge Road should be a 20 mph zone. But the Department of Transport & Motor Supremacism wouldn't allow the Council to do this, even if it wanted to. So drivers are free to drive at reckless speeds, only slamming on their brakes for a speed camera (the number of which is grossly inadequate on this major highway). The signs of bad driving are everywhere on Lea Bridge Road:
Even though this very dangerous road has a high level of cycle use, extra hazards are quite unnecessarily created for cyclists:
And naturally no blame at all attaches to drivers who hit a cyclist or a pedestrian with one of these. Carrying an offensive weapon which may kill or cause grievous bodily harm - that's not what our mass media means when it talks about yobs and anti-social behaviour.
