I DO despair at the growing assortment of pedestrians of all ages who step into the road without a glance to either side because they are deep in talking to invisible people or listening to sounds that give them delusions of immortality.

I must mention black-clothed night time figures who appear out of the shadows on to a zebra crossing without pausing to check that vehicles are slowing or drivers have seen them at all.

Then there are the silent cyclists who whoosh around you from behind on pretty narrow pavements, making you jump out of your skin and feel their breeze on your cheek, never mind imagining what might have happened had you stepped unknowingly six inches to one side.

That is all a preamble to a really shocking experience in plain daylight on the forked junction off a busy main road I have to negotiate every time I go home.

I was watching both an approaching town-wards pedestrian and looking for a gap in town-wards fast moving traffic.

The pedestrian having slowed I swung towards our street entrance when out of the hedge shadows on a pavement on the right fork hurtled a mobility scooter, off the pavement, pauseless, straight across my path.

Luckily I was taught emergency stops well, aged 17 in another century.

No pause or apology from scooter driver. Pedestrian a bit shocked. Me? Very shaken and angry.

Dorothy Nicholson,

Fishergate, York