I'm a mother, therefore ...

I walk the offspring to school or cycle with her, because she isn't old enough to go by herself in this (paranoid) day and age, because it is good for us, because it saves money, because it permits me to feel smugly virtuous about the environmental impact of our mode of travel.

I don't do this for the exhilaration of putting my life on the line or the adrenalin pumping fear arising from putting her life in similar peril.

The school is located on a side street, because building it there twenty years ago when the town was smaller facilitated the provision of a playing field. But it was always a side street. Every other building on the street is a dwelling. In keeping with urban development everywhere in this bloody country the street is just wide enough for one lane going each way, or when cars are parked up on both sides just one vehicle at a time.

When the cars parked up on each side are 4x4 size vehicles and the car attempting to drive between them is another there's barely a cigarette paper's distance between any of them. Women who can barely see over the steering wheels of the vehicles they drive will sit and wait for someone to move out rather than attempt to negotiate between parked up vehicles. Tempers fray, inevitably.

One mother's lost leg after being caught between two of these behemoths.

Recently I've been harassed off the road by the woman who runs the local bookies. She's got to get back and open up and that means I've got to get out of her way.

Stopping to drop off or collect on the zig zags, double parking, parking on double yellow lines, speeding, careless door opening, parking on the right, failing to indicate, using a hand held mobile phone, smoking. It's all there, on display, every day; flagrant disregard for the most basic and sensible rules government behaviour while in control of what is potentially a lethal piece of machinery and lack of consideration for everyone else.

Some one's going to be killed and all because these women won't do the right thing.