DAVID W Gulliver asks: "How much longer are we going to have to put up with the so-called 'traffic calming' measures introduced by City of York Council?" (Letters, January 27).

The answer is simple: until drivers can be trusted to obey the law.

Nobody likes traffic calming. Drivers and cyclists don't while residents don't like the extra noise. But most accept it in return for the lower traffic speeds. Despite Mr Gulliver's apparent beliefs, City of York Council would really rather not be spending our money on it.

Unfortunately, a proportion of drivers - Mr Gulliver says more than 75 per cent - are selfish, irresponsible law-breakers, making traffic-calming necessary to protect the majority who are not driving: children, the elderly, pedestrians and cyclists.

Protecting the weak majority from a powerful, arrogant minority - now that's what I call democracy.

Adrian Setter,

Barnfield Way,

Copmanthorpe, York.

...THE city council generally installs traffic calming at sites requested by residents, using national design guidelines laid down by the Department of Transport.

If your correspondent lived on a "rat- run" street, where speeding drivers threaten life and limb, then he might be more appreciative of the need to curb their behaviour.

If the speed limit on New Lane is regularly being broken as he claims, then radar traps, cameras and prosecutions are surely preferable to his fatuous suggestion that the present situation is legitimised by raising the speed limit.

Please kill your speed, not other residents of our city, especially vulnerable pedestrians and cyclists.

Paul Hepworth,

Windmill Rise,

Holgate, York.

Updated: 10:52 Thursday, January 29, 2004