Sir, at 1900 hours on Saturday, May 29, an accident occurred on the corner of Aynam Road opposite the Parish Church.

Since 1966, I have written almost identical words in letters to Cumbria's Highways authority, 162 times. Each time a vehicle leaves the roadway and careers across the pavement, I dutifully express my concern by writing to Carlisle.

Sometimes the vehicles smash into one of the front walls of the five houses on the corner. Other times, vehicles crash into the riverside railings. A number of vehicles have gone straight through and landed in the water.

The worst to hit my own house was a huge articulated lorry carrying 30 tons of paper rolls. The tractor unit ended up in my cellar. The most frightening was during the firemen's strike when a loaded petrol tanker ended up in the front room of the house next door.

The most serious was when one man died and several were seriously injured when a large vehicle hit the tree across from our front door.

Many of the crashes occur in the evenings at weekends when local drivers race each other round the town in hot hatches. Their latest trick is to drive two-abreast as fast as they can and hold conversations through the open windows.

It's always the same. Watching TV or whatever, you hear the shriek of the tyres losing it, followed by the crump of impacting metal.

Last winter, the drivers were trying for record speeds, and three cars in the one month ended up on their roofs, sliding a good 200 yards up the road.

The drivers tend to jump out like James Bond and take off into the night like Linford Christie on a good day. We residents then tend to fearfully search under the wreckage for the pedestrian who one day soon - inevitably - will be trapped and mangled.

The relief when we find no one causes levity and we have been known to catcall the miscreants or applaud. Myself, I collect the number plates. Well, I might as well; none has ever offered to pay for the repairs to the front wall of my house.

It does our nerves no good. Local councillors come and go, all express a sincere desire to commiserate, but none has ever lifted a finger. My letters to the highways department at Carlisle have been ignored.

Once I tried to find out why this was so. The answer shook even me. It seems the highways authority only takes notice of incidents where injury took place. So in a standard, ordinary, hit-and-run, my letter cannot be taken as having happened. So no report is entered. No reports, no statistics. No statistics, no action can be considered.

People have died over the years on this corner; we residents all know what causes it. We residents are sufficiently up on the subject to also know what could be done to protect our persons and property.

My house is worth little these days, unbuyable, I'd think. The front is plain tatty and battle-scarred.

The planning authorities have been their usual funny selves round the back on the canal bank so that we've nowhere to park a car.

Someone declared the street a conservation area, which means we have to ask permission before we do major repairs to our own homes. We fear to leave and enter the houses at the front doors, and guess what? The Council Tax has just gone up again!

These council people should be accountable in the same way a company director is. A few of them losing their houses to pay for damages would soon calm down the mysterious appearance of one-way traffic systems supposedly installed according to the will of the people.

But, I'm not yet done. I keep meticulous records. One day, someone will be killed or seriously maimed.

My records will then be used in court to establish culpability on the part of the highways authority.

P. Southall Kendal