I AM writing in response to SJ Fermor's letter, Slow driving is no solution (Advertiser, March 27).

I am a very even-tempered person and have never been so incensed to the point of writing to a newspaper.

I am presuming that SJ Fermor is a man as most women drivers seem to have more sense and patience.

Does he even realise when he speeds down Gorcott Hill "trying to get ahead of slower vehicles before the dual-carriageway ends" that he is actually entering a village where people have to live?

We, as a village, have campaigned for years to get some kind of speed restriction to stop the ever-growing number of fatal accidents, the latest just last week.

I have lost count of the number of deaths in the village in the last two years.

Perhaps he would like to try to convince the daughter and grandchildren of a late neighbour of ours, killed last year trying to cross the road outside the village hall, that these restrictions are "just for the sake of it".

Or maybe he should have a word with our milkman who spent months in hospital critically injured while trying to deliver milk near Common Lane.

Unfortunately, he can't ask the opinion of another elderly neighbour whose car was hit and rolled over when she was trying to pull out of Doghill petrol station. I don't think she ever fully recovered from the shock before her death.

Maybe he should express his opinion to the family of an elderly couple killed when their car was hit head-on outside Badger Nursery or the family of the driver killed last year in a head-on on the bend outside The Boot.

If he actually lived in Mappleborough Green and tried to pull out from the church car park, the Doghill garage, the nurseries or one of the three lanes in the village, he might have a different opinion.

Maybe instead of railing at the possible inconvenience of taking an extra couple of minutes to drive through Mappleborough Green, he should think of the years of life wasted in the early, unnecessary deaths of so many people in the last couple of years.

If we had the promised bypass, he could speed to his early demise without quibble from me.

However, until such time as the road is built (if ever) I am all for speed restrictions, speed cameras, traffic calming, humps or pedestrian crossings.

In fact, I believe that anything it takes to save one life is worth any amount of inconvenience caused to SJ Fermor and his Formula 1 friends.

Sylvia McNeil

Mappleborough Green