Letters: All lives matter

Yet again, pedestrians are seen as third class citizens in this town.
After the pedestrian disaster of Lifestyle Centre, I really thought that every effort would be made to ensure pedestrian safety and accessibility to the new Ballito Junction Mall. And no, it’s not enough to have a crossing at the traffic lights.
Safety to me means that you would be happy for your children to use that route.
Public transport is situated across the road from a huge Mall, where it is envisaged thousands of customers will visit daily.
Just because everyone who is responsible for road traffic and planning approvals uses a car daily, is no reason to make life difficult and dangerous for the majority of our population.
It is common sense that hundreds of pedestrians will not patiently queue at one traffic crossing to get to their transport, especially at rush hour. An underpass or overpass is the only safe solution. Yes, it’s expensive, but so is a R1.4 billion-rand Mall. How much is a pedestrian’s life worth?
It is not the fault of speeding cars or jay walkers, it is simply bad planning. We don’t seem to have any provisions for pedestrians at all in this town, at every junction we are manoeuvring around streams of people trying not to get run over on their way to and from work.
It is shocking that we expect pedestrians to fight for space against the onslaught of ever growing traffic.
If any of our local councillor’s want to take up a worthy cause and show that all lives matter, I’m sure most Ballito residents will support you.
ANDREA SHARROCK
Ballito