ON Friday, November 9, my wife and I were leaving Ellis's bakery in Tavistock and heading down West Street towards town, when I noticed a mobility scooter crossing the one-way part of West Street at the junction with Russell Street. There was no traffic.

The scooter was about halfway across when two motor-bikes appeared from the Bedford Square direction very noisily and you could not ignore them.

As they approached the scooter, the leading driver seemed to accelerate and instead of stopping to let the mobility scooter complete the crossing, the driver lay the bike over to the right and raced past the old lady on the scooter, missing her by about a foot.

The second biker, instead of braking, also skidded past her, this time missing her by inches and stopped just past where I was standing, proceeded to give the scooter a two-fingered salute then raced off up West Street on the wrong side of the road at high speed.

I have seen these two people before acting in a similar way, and using the Plymouth Road late at night as some sort of speedway circuit, seemingly disregarding any road safety, speed or regard for pedestrians, turning our town into a trials or race track.

How an accident did not happen I don't know. If a mother with a pram and children in tow had been there instead of the mobility scooter I shudder to think what might have been the outcome. How the old lady did not have a heart attack is beyond me.

How long are the town council or police going to let our beautiful town be used like this? There must be some measures that can be put in place to stop this behaviour and prevent an accident in the future.  I can just see the headlines: 'Tourist knocked down by out of control motorcycle'.

Tom Perrin

Tavistock