Merle Ford, Bergvliet
Your lead article (“Awareness campaign follows biker’s death” Bulletin December 16) explains the traffic jam on Main Road on the eve of Thursday November 25. What it does not explain is why there was no traffic-flow control.
Caught in the resultant backed-up traffic from the intersection of Tokai and Main roads on my return from work that day I could see rising smoke and smell burning rubber as I moved forward, nearing the site of the obstruction.
A week earlier, the morning traffic in this area had been diverted, due to a clearly serious accident.
As the traffic crept forward, I became aware of large number of motorbikes lining either side of the road outside Zwaanswyk High School and the sport's Club opposite.
When I became the first car in the line, I had to wait some minutes while two bikers with roaring engines, burned rubber doing circular wheelies in the road. Confused, I didn't dare ask any questions of the burly-looking bikers lining the roadside and sat waiting.
Finally, a biker on my right gestured permission for me to move onto the wrong side of the road to get round the performers.
Since I live close to Main Road, I was aware of revving motorbikes well into the evening and around 9.30pm. I messaged a local councillor to ask if there was an explanation for this activity. The reply was in the negative. That same councillor is in the line-up of a photo of concerned parties purported to be organising a Biker Awareness Campaign in response to what, it is revealed, was a biker fatality on Thursday November 18.
The biker motorcade on Thursday November 25 was a memorial for the unfortunate deceased victim.
While I accept that the ritual was a biking tradition and am not unsympathetic to the cause, I find it hugely ironic that a main thoroughfare was taken over at peak traffic time without any traffic control. And this on the boundary of the very school that is supposedly taking the lead in a road-safety campaign.
Surely council has to issue a permit for such an event - the purpose of which is to ensure road safety by providing personnel to monitor traffic flow?