SIR - I have been following with interest the recent items regarding Harrogate Road since the tragic collision recently.

I was somewhat astonished to read that some local residents are of the opinion that the section of road between Wharncliffe Drive and Ravenscliffe Avenue is not a short section of dual carriageway (T&A, January 17).

If it isn't, then how would you describe a section of road which carries traffic in both directions, this traffic being separated by a wide central and continuous island?

I would say without question it is a dual carriageway.

I have lived at my current address since 1967, and when I moved there this section of road was a single carriageway. Following on from the demolition of the railway bridge which crossed Harrogate Road, and some old houses, this road was widened to its present state.

For many years I was the police traffic sergeant at Eccleshill, and attended many collisions on Harrogate Road, fatal and serious injury ones, and can state quite categorically that the major cause was down to people who either drove without due care or as pedestrians crossed the roads without care, or as cyclists rode onto the roads without care.

Highway engineers can only do so much as to the signing and layout of the roads systems we have - the rest is down to the users!

Brian Pickford, Summerbridge Crescent, Eccleshill