truth we needed Mr. Michael Mylod to voice this concern - and take some action - about 20 years ago before Bermuda reached crisis point.

Using Bermuda's roads, no matter how scenic, is no longer a pleasure. Most people today use the roads because they have to and not because they want to.

Even a brief journey will encounter any number of bad driving habits and traffic offences. It will not be very long before visitors are confined to their hotels because they will no longer dare rent mopeds.

The Police are planning to take a fresh approach to "traffic calming''. We can only hope that it works because it involves greater focus on driver training, road engineering to slow vehicles and remote enforcement with speed detection cameras. Right now we widen and straighten roads and then wonder why speeds increase. The solution for a place like Bermuda is to make the traffic fit the roads.

What often puzzles people on the roads is the bad driving habits which endanger the perpetrator. Many people on the roads seem to have very little sense of their own safety. Some of that is a lack of driver training but some comes about because Bermuda panders to the motor trade by allowing the sale of vehicles which are larger and more powerful than Bermudians require.

Excessive speed is often a factor in accidents and while it endangers other road users, it is especially dangerous to the speeder.

Driving up on the inside of other vehicles is illegal and dangerous to the driver, especially the rider of an auxiliary cycle. Yet cycles regularly squeeze dangerously between cars and the sidewalk and the rider is often a mature woman with a child passenger. The same is often true at traffic lights.

Double parking cars, especially in Hamilton, even with warning lights flashing, is dangerous, not to mention annoying, because it forces other traffic into a single lane. Yet people double park all the time, apparently with impunity, and traffic wardens ticket parked cars but ignore dangerous double parkers.

Car drivers recklessly pass on yellow lines or corners, relying on anything approaching to take avoiding action, which is not always possible.

Cars hang on the rear of other cars, often so close that their headlights are not visible to the driver in front. Children carried on motor cycles are particularly in danger. Yet you see them all the time, often in front of the rider, while the rider speeds precariously in and out of traffic. Too often the rider is a mother.

Riding two abreast is illegal and can force an accident by making drivers pull out further than necessary to overtake. Yet people ride two abreast all the time, especially pedal cyclists.

Sidewalks are for safety and for protection from motor traffic. Yet runners often run in the roads, with the traffic, alongside the sidewalk.

The list is much longer. Yesterday Mr. Mylod was quoted as saying, "It is hoped that cautioning and advice will impact on offending drivers by pointing out to them their anti-social behaviour and potential danger to themselves and innocent road users.''