Kill your common sense.

There is a quite disturbing advert on the radio, its been running for some months now. It's an anti-speed advert ending with a little kiddie's voice saying "Hit me at 40 miles per hour and there is an 80 per cent chance I will die, hit me at 30 miles per hour and there is an 80 per cent chance I will live"

Have you noticed the increase in such adverts, in varying degrees of gruesomeness? The ones that you see late at night really make your skin crawl and are invariably more ghastly than the late night horror that you decided might be a bit of a laugh.

I haven't driven in about 10 years. I did hit someone once when I did drive - at about 5 miles per hour. I have been hit myself - again at about 5 miles per hour. The fault, in both cases, I am free to admit, was with the pedestrian not looking where the heck he/I was going.

So someone please tell me what has happened to the Green Cross Code? (Why a cross, and why green, has escaped me). No longer do you see kids lining up nicely at the kerbside (the edge of their brogues just touching the kerbstone). Looking first to the left, then to the right, then back to the left again, listening (with the cupped hand to the ear) and then walking neatly across, looking and listening the whole time.

OK so it never did happen that way.

However, even in my street, in the backroads of Twickenham I would never ever cross the road without at least looking first (the time I got hit I was on my way home from school and just was not thinking straight)

Many deaths could be prevented by schools and parents teaching their kids the funduhmentals of crossing the road. There are of course many exceptions. Only a complete idiot would drive over 25 mph down a road which contained a school at 3.30pm on a weekday. But I'd love to see them try with the amount of parents, with Landrovers, on the school run. Oh that's another rant for another day.

So how about an advert aimed at kids in a similarly gruesome manner? Take care in crossing the road or you will probably DIE.

Extreme, but it might work.