WHILST I sympathise with Mr Jones’ loss and tend to agree with the concept that a driving licence is not a licence to drive but a licence to continue to learn to drive whilst alone in a car, I have to ask about the way he draws his conclusions in his letter, “A driving licence is not a right, it is a privilege” (December 24).

His letter makes it sound as if every accident involving motorists and children is always the vehicle driver’s fault and never the child’s. That is inherently wrong.

Every day, I see school children crossing the road as if it is their God given right to walk across any time they please and that all vehicles should give way to them.

Many accidents involving children are the fault of the children themselves, either through arrogance, like the secondary school pupils crossing the roads, or the younger children not taught better ways to deal with traffic and copying the “bigger” children in the way they cross the road.

I speak from experience as a lorry driver who was involved in a vehicular accident with a school girl.

I was coming down Blackburn Road from Darwen and a bus, heading towards Darwen, stopped opposite Cox Green Road, where there is no bus stop.

As I passed the bus, a teenage school girl ran from behind the bus. I had no chance.

I swerved to the left, locking up all the wheels on a 24-ton lorry. I didn’t hit her so much as she ran into the driver’s door of my lorry, she was running that fast.

She only had cuts and grazes, luckily for her. However, at her school she told everybody it was my fault.

At the time of the accident, everybody was concerned about her. Nobody gave a thought to me being in pieces at the thought of what could have happened.

I had an independent witness, otherwise I would probably have been castigated by all for causing the accident.

An accident caused by a bus driver doing a school girl a favour dropping her off nearer to her home, and a school girl in a hurry to get home.

So sometimes accidents can be the fault of the child, not always the motorist.

J D O’Connor, Redcar Road, Little Lever