You’d think this week’s Free Press front page and editorial would support the views of locals who are fed up with the misery of noisy, out-of-control motor bikes.
Instead, the paper blames the tragic loss of 13 biker lives in North Wales this year on anything but speeding. In fact, the paper believes speed plays virtually no part in any biker crash.
It goes on to give oxygen to a lone campaigner vehemently opposed to speed cameras. Whether the police here pursue an acceptable policy on speeding motorists or not, should the Free Press at least have sought a complementary police view? Or from the highways authority?
And should the paper consider what locals feel?
Speeding bikers are at best a nuisance and at worst threaten themselves and innocent people on local roads. Most descend here on fine days from Greater Manchester and Merseyside and they use the A494, A525 & B5105 locally as a huge playground, oblivious to locals. As they pass through our town centre and villages, how many of them have the courtesy to keep within the speed limits, set locally to protect our communities? How many realise that on a warm summer’s day their high revving engines are an unacceptable, real and penetrative intrusion into our homes, even well beyond properties on the roadside?
A good example is the newly-set 30 and 40 mph limits at Llanbedr DC on the A494. Experience suggests that by the time bikers returning to England hit the 40mph limit, they are already at 60 and accelerating further.
In fact, you don’t need to have lived here long before you recognise and can catalogue the sorts of antics irresponsible bikers get up to. We list a few at the foot of an earlier post.
It may or may not be true that “you can’t measure safe driving in miles per hour”. What visiting motorcyclists are doing in this area, though, is using highly inappropriate speeds, for the often sub-standard road, visibility and weather conditions.
Comment left yesterday on this post:
“These days it seems the Free Press is going gun-ho for a slice of the national tabloid cake… Lets hope this paper pulls itself together and focuses its sights on local issues. Is it me or is the Free Press missing the heart of its readership of late?”
Instead, the paper blames the tragic loss of 13 biker lives in North Wales this year on anything but speeding. In fact, the paper believes speed plays virtually no part in any biker crash.
It goes on to give oxygen to a lone campaigner vehemently opposed to speed cameras. Whether the police here pursue an acceptable policy on speeding motorists or not, should the Free Press at least have sought a complementary police view? Or from the highways authority?
And should the paper consider what locals feel?
Speeding bikers are at best a nuisance and at worst threaten themselves and innocent people on local roads. Most descend here on fine days from Greater Manchester and Merseyside and they use the A494, A525 & B5105 locally as a huge playground, oblivious to locals. As they pass through our town centre and villages, how many of them have the courtesy to keep within the speed limits, set locally to protect our communities? How many realise that on a warm summer’s day their high revving engines are an unacceptable, real and penetrative intrusion into our homes, even well beyond properties on the roadside?
A good example is the newly-set 30 and 40 mph limits at Llanbedr DC on the A494. Experience suggests that by the time bikers returning to England hit the 40mph limit, they are already at 60 and accelerating further.
In fact, you don’t need to have lived here long before you recognise and can catalogue the sorts of antics irresponsible bikers get up to. We list a few at the foot of an earlier post.
It may or may not be true that “you can’t measure safe driving in miles per hour”. What visiting motorcyclists are doing in this area, though, is using highly inappropriate speeds, for the often sub-standard road, visibility and weather conditions.
Comment left yesterday on this post:
“These days it seems the Free Press is going gun-ho for a slice of the national tabloid cake… Lets hope this paper pulls itself together and focuses its sights on local issues. Is it me or is the Free Press missing the heart of its readership of late?”