J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

We live in a cul de sac in a nice area, there are loads of kids down the road, about twenty houses and more than twenty kids, there are a couple of older families at the dead end of the road, one of which that has a Merc ML who drives to fast, I have tried hinting on the grounds that he is intelligent bloke, he isnt a complete tosser, witty, friendly and generally a good neighbour, but he drives way to fast for a 150 yard long cul de sac, there is a bend half way down, you should not need to brake for it.

I am not sure what a 2.5 tonne Merc ML would do to a seven year old when its travelling at 30 plus miles per hour but I imagine that it may be messy and terminal, before you say that the kids should not be on the road can I just say thats not the case, they play out all the time and so they should, you try teaching them road sense but sometimes they forget, thats kids, 50 year old Solicitors shouldnt forget, his Merc wont die if a kid runs into it.

Anyway, once I had calmed down, I sent him this,

Name changed.



Rick,

You drove past our house tonight at about 6pm going at about 40 mph between parked cars and had to brake for the corner,

I appreciate you may have been in a hurry but there are about 20 kids of school age down this road, your car weighs 2.5 tonnes
and I dont think there is much of an impression of speed from inside, but from outside it seemed very fast.

I really dont want to offend you or fall out but my childrens safety is paramount.

Please can you slow down.

Mark

Lee247

That's fair enough

555Rob555

Standby for the brick through your window.

simplesteve

Yeah I'd say that was fine and fair enough too. Although I'd have personally gone and spoke to him face to face.

Steve

j4ckos mate

hi mate ite me

hes a dick, i dont think i would have been that restrained if i were you,

the im all right society we live in really pisses me off, if hes got half a brain he should be nice because when young kids get to be teenagers they can be resally nasty im sure we have all oicked onm the bloke up the road and thrown stones at his windows etc..

Nido

Sounds fair, although I agree face to face may have been better. Do you get on with him at all?

If he doesn't take any notice then there are further options available

j4ckos mate

hi mate leave the football nets up in the road, they could be his arrester hook

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

The football nets do get left up sometimes, to be honest he is an ok guy, his wife responded and apologized for him, apparently he was rushing to get a flight, no excuse she said but hopefully the point will get through.

I did think of going down but its a bit confrontational and I am reserving that for next time, have already told one bloke the score down here.

At the last place I got offered out by theis daft Irish bloke when I suggested that I preffered if he didnt go past my **** at sixty (BMW 328i) when I am getting a baby seat out, he took no notice, in fact made a point of going as fast as possible, until I had a word with plod who just waited patiently at the times I said he went past usually and they got him, 62 in a 30 I heard afterwards, didnt hear the outcome of the case but they moved soon after.

What a little Hitler !

brumdaisy

Ok so Im not condoning someone speeding but....

1) I have read your gripes about your neighbours a couple of times yet they have to put up with your kids playing football in the street. Are you telling me that the football has never hit and dented a car or a child has never run into one of the cars and scratched it? No damage so far? Well thats down to luck.

2) Why should people have shouting kids outside their front windows disturbing them? Dont you have a back garden or a park?

3) And probably the most important. Have you not seen the damage a car can do to a child at only 20 mph? Children dont look where they are going, they do get carried away in the moment but why should I as a driver have to crawl along every street where I see children, at 10 mph just in case one of the children playing isnt paying attention? Or rather, despite you knowing full well the potential dangers, why do you let your kids play in the street?

Dracoro

brumdaisy, he's in a cul-de-sac. Exactly the sort of street where kids should be able to roam about. If you're in one of these streets you are either leaving or arriving so absolutely no need to drive fast.

Hanslow

I can sympathise with both brumdaisy and J4CKO. Driver's should be cautious around residential areas, but then kids should also be aware of vehicles driving on the road (where they belong) and if they hear a vehicle approaching they should get out the way quick sharpish as they will always lose a fight with one.

Would be nice to see kids revert to going to fields to play or gardens rather than out in the street though.

brumdaisy

On one hand thats touchingly aspirational but totally unrealistic and on the other, totally insane because most people are rushing when they leave for work and brain dead/thinking about what to have for tea when they drive home.

j4ckos mate

as you know im j4ckos mate i feel i can give an honest opinion.

most of you lads in here like your fast cars and i suspect you or some of you are boy racers,


me and jacko were , we used to bomb around the lanes at 80 mph at the back of the airport laffin our heads off,


then you have kids and this all conquering instinct comes into play.


and you will do anything it takes to guarentee their security and safety.


his road is a culde sac (Dead end) about 100 mtrs long and his and many other kids play on it, i believe it is their right to do so.

i myself speed as does jacko , we do it on A roads or on the m way,
but not around local roads. i know jacko hes a good guy.
what he didint tell you is is neighbours has a caterham. he doesnt drive down the road fast nor do any of his other neighbours.
at the end of the day if this cocksxucker killed his kids id have a hard time not having a word with him myself.

Hanslow

Playing devil's advocate.....keep the kids off the street then. The world is a dangerous place with death at every turn. It's all a case of damage limitation.

I'm not saying that it's OK for the driver to be doing 40 in a residential area, but from my experience, there is a big lack of road and danger awareness in todays kids to the point that if you had two headstrong people, one in a car, one on the road, there would be carnage.

scud8

iTrader: (1)

This is total cr*p. 30mph on a 150m road will get you to work 20 seconds faster than doing 10mph.

brumdaisy

how many people do you know who live 150 metres from their work place? Unless of course we are only supposed to worry about the kids on cul-de-sacs, not those on other quiet or even not so quiet residential roads?

Regularly swapping lanes on a busy motorway might only shave 5 minutes off an hour journey, people still do it.

Anyway your arguement has no validity. Sorry, I mean it is cr*p. The point I was making is that people tend not to concentrate on the road so much at those times of day.

OllyK

Err, there is no part of the highway that should be being used as a kids play ground, period.

bob r

iTrader: (46)

poster----------------------i admire your tactile approach to this situation.
i take it the note was not anonymous?

i too live in a quiet ave with no through route. there is around 20 houses in total with the last 5 being bungalows with the obvious age group of residents in these. you would think that these people with their maturity, would drive very safely and conservatively in such a residential area but they dont. the majority of them drive way too fast past my house which has my young ones playing outside.
if my children are ever injured by one of these mindless drivers i will do time.

bob r

iTrader: (46)

absolute bollox

Maz

iTrader: (34)

Come on mate a bit of diplomacy and decorum.

brumdaisy

LOL I thought the same about your 'dont you dare let your car hit my kids when they are playing on the road' post

But I couldn't be arsed

I think I might try getting mums with prams banned from pavements and forced on to the road makes sense eh

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

The note was not anonymous, it had my email address and name on it.

All the kids play out, in summer there are loads of them, they aren't going to stop playing out for hours just for 1 or 2 car movements per hour. Mine do play in the street but its because most of the kids are out there, I cant confine them to the garden though they do play in it, they play football as its over 100 ft long, we end up with 10 kids in the garden at a time. I dont allow them to play when there are cars parked that they can hit so they end up back in the garden. They would be the only kids on the road confined to their garden so not an option.

Brumdaisy, beleive me the shouting kids annoy me as well, not just mine but the other god knows how many, small girls scream at everything, it goes through me when they are out in the road.

I am trying to drum road safety into them and they do seem to be getting better but kids are stupid and erratic so grown ups have to compensate.

Saw an lad in a Honda Civic Maxpower thing yesterday as well, doing about sixty down a terraced street, cars either side, strereo blaring, somehow the road safety message isnt getting through.

Apparition

Speak for yourself Brums......

I'm usually leaving my home in good time to get to my destination and arriving home in a fairly sane state of mind.
Yve

Apparition

BTW we live between two culdesacs and have had to endure the racket of skateboards and footballs over the fence with regularity,BUT , I often think back to my childhood when we used to play out and didn't have telly's etc. I'd far rather see kids playing out than think of them glued to a screen playing god knows what violent crap.
Yve

Nido

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

I did give him a couple of hints, they do the homewatch and I sent theman email asking to send one out to ask residents to ask their visitors and contractors (lot of building) to bear in mind the children down the road, didnt get it, in fact said he would have a word with his son ?

I really dont think these big off roaders give much of a sensation of speed.

King RA

In the nicest way; Im really glad you're not my neighbour.

vessy

Firstly I thought your letter was correctly composed.

I don't usually get involved with non tech posts but...............

I probably used to drive too fast for area's with young children but now I have kids and don't so i agree with what J4ckos Mate said.

Maybe kids should be more road aware but they are kids, playing kids, if we were all more aware we wouldn't have any accidents So we can't blame just them. It's a fact of life, why would they reduce speed limits to 25 in school zones if it wasn't.

I think most of us drive to a limit we feel is safe, yes we break the speed limit but by how much is dependant on what we assess around us.

In responce to Brumdaisy's points, you are right nobody enjoys kids playing football outside there house/front window and ***** do hit cars however speeding in retaliation isn't the answer, dealing with the situation in a similar way to J4ckos would be more normal. Cars can do damage to any human even at 5mph, no one is saying to drop your speed the second you see kids but maybe you would reduce the amount over the limit you were?

This guy knows there are kids playing, he also knows it's a cul-de-sac he probably knows the kids, what if he did hit somebody? would he blame the individual for not looking, or himself for speeding? I know i wouldn't feel quite so bad about myself if it hapened to me and i was on or under the limit.

I don't think kids are less aware of road safety at all, we all as parents make it a huge responcibility to tell them, what's changed is the amount of cars and there capabilities, 70mph in a 20 year old car feels similar to 100 in a new modern refined tank!


So as a kid you never played on your pushbike with friends on a quiet estate road/cul-de-sac? It happens!

Scooby-Doo

Dead end or not I will never allow my children to play in the road.

Freak

Funny........thats what all the parents/kids thought in my rd when the little ****es were pissing about in the road - until last yr when one of them went round the corner on the wrong side of the road on her bike not looking, and straight into the front of a car.

And yet the rest of them still do exactly the same and worse