Roads and busses: Letters, 9 September

The Bay of Plenty Times welcomes letters and comments from readers. Here you can read the letters we have published in your newspaper today.

Bus injuries could not be avoided by seat belt use

When something tragic happens, there is always a plethora of hysterical emotive reaction.

And so it is with the Ruatoki school bus crash and seat belts in school buses.

However, let's look at it constructively. Those at the back of the bus were no doubt the worst injured.

The nature of impact and damage indicates seat belts would have made no difference to these children.

And, as happens when a vehicle receives a severe rear shunt, passengers in the front vehicle are thrown backwards with force and suffer resultant injuries.

Photos of the bus interior show this happened as many or most seats collapsed backwards.

Seat belts would not have therefore avoided these injuries either.

And certainly seat belts would not have helped those standing in the bus.

Certainly, let's consider how safety can be improved, but let's do so in a constructive way.

John W Kelliher, Tauranga

Lack of road link

It is disgraceful that people travelling to Hamilton or Rotorua cannot join K road at 11th or 15th avenues.

Unless one goes back to Elizabeth St, people going West from between 3rd Ave and the hospital, have to traipse all the way out Cameron Rd.

I believe several hundred people daily would willingly pay a dollar to get out via route K if only they could access it.

And that would help the deficit.

It is stated that only 250 cars use the off ramp at 15th Ave daily - that is not a measure of cars that might use route K in the other direction.

Surely the council could put a short one-way link by the Historic Village without breaking the bank?

F R Bernard, Omokoroa

Admit wrongs

Both John Key and Judith Collins have over the years displayed hints of their view that the State must always be seen to be dominant, right or wrong, but never more so than when the firearms charges against most of the Urewera accused - all that remains of the vast terrorist conspiracy advanced by the police - were this week dropped.

Presumably the Government believes that this attitude leads to stability in society - and that they must staunchly hold the line against any challenge to authority, but they are actually dead wrong.

Strong institutions don't come from denial, and neither does a strong and stable society; the opposite is in fact the case.

When the government refuses to face facts; when they seek to obscure the issue with suppression orders and innuendo (an unlicensed gun becomes "firearm charges"); and when they refuse to face up to the reality that police pointing a loaded automatic weapon at a weeping 12-year-old girl's head is just abhorrent to New Zealanders, all they are doing is contributing to a weakening in the structures they seek to maintain, and provoking a contempt for the authority. Bad call, guys.

Peter Tashkoff, Auckland

Text Views

* speed cameras are for 100kph zones where speed fatalities occur, not for revenue gathering and population surveillance in suburbia.

* oh gudy gudy te hot pulz opn again - at a loss

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