WHAT chance does the message, "chill out, slow down", aimed at reducing child casualties have, when the message from Transport Minister, Alistair Darling, says it is OK to exceed speed limits?

His new proposals to deal with speeding motorists, which allows them to drive up to 38mph without being penalised - a supposedly fairer system: but fairer for who? - will do little, if anything, to improve matters.

In effect, what he has done is give greater freedom to motorists to kill innocent children.

With the rules of British road traffic law to support them, drivers can exceed speed limits as long as children don't get caught up in the "crossfire", but if they do, it's an accident, when really it should be a crime.

At 35mph, a driver who hits a pedestrian is twice as likely to kill them, compared with a driver travelling at 30mph. Therefore, is 35mph not dangerous? And what might the 38mph be - that which is allowed under Alistair Darling's so-called "fairer system"? In a car, it is surely very dangerous and very irresponsible; in a bus or a 40-ton truck, it is even more so, and, on wet roads, worse still.

However, the new, "fairer system" indicates that such speed won't be punished.

Allan Ramsay

Ashcombe Drive

Radcliffe