Letters: Campaign will encourage drivers to run red lights

The Road Traffic Act requires a driver to stop and wait behind the first white line they come to when an amber light shows at traffic lights.

If they cannot stop safely they can proceed beyond the stop line. Where there is an advanced stop line for cyclists then the driver is required to stop at the second line and wait; they would be stopped in the area marked for cyclists.

Drivers can only be prosecuted for driving over the white line when the lights indicate to stop, there is no offence for stopping in the area marked for cyclist unless the drivers crosses the first line after the lights have changed to red.

The adverts on the rear of the buses are effectively encouraging drivers to proceed across the second stop line to avoid a (non-existent) fine for stopping in the red box.

Jonathan Smith, driving instructor, Edinburgh

More help would be a vote winner

GORDON Buchan, Tory health spokesman on Edinburgh City Council, is right to hope that there is some non-prescription help available for ADHD (News, April 6).

A combination of medication and behavioural therapy is desperately needed, but unfortunately the NHS does not have sufficient funding to provide non-medication help for this condition.

ADHD is believed to be influenced by genes, birth trauma or difficult early years factors, or a combination of these.

The fact that there is a rise in cases could be due to better diagnosis, but also points to the urgent need for more research on the causes to help minimise the prevalence of the condition.

If Alison McInnes, Scottish Lib Dem health spokeswoman, and Gordon Buchan could turn their shock and vague hopes into action and use their influence to find funding and support for children with ADHD, and now the young adults they are becoming, then someone might just vote for them.

Elspeth Porter, Henderson Row, Edinburgh

City’s transport drives you mad

DON’T you just love these letters from people who have been on a wee Continental city break and tell us this or that city copes beautifully with cycles, trams and so on?

I’ve travelled many times to the Continent and admired other countries’ ideas too – but as for trams gliding through city streets, that would be fine in Nice but I feel Auld Mucky’s grimy, narrow, littered streets full of boarded-up shops might lack a certain appeal.

Anyway, as a friend’s husband (a civil engineer on holiday from Australia) remarked on a short visit recently, the problem in Edinburgh is nobody has worked out that the traffic problem isn’t limited to west-east, but north-south. Bring back the trains!

B Robertson, Montgomery Street, Edinburgh

Display is a bad sign of the times

JENNY Dawe finds time to tick off Martin Hannan for suggesting that her party was among those voting for the tram line to terminate at Haymarket (Letters, April 5).

If Ms Dawe is so keen on accuracy, it might be more to the point if she arranged for the removal of the prominent advertising displays in St Andrew Square, which not only describe the tram line as running all the way to Newhaven, but also carry the following bold announcement: “Trams will deliver a new transport choice to Edinburgh’s streets by 2011.”

David Jackson Young, India Street, Edinburgh