AND so our roads have claimed another casualty. The news that a 46-year-old man was killed when his motorbike collided with a car on Haslingden Old Road, Oswaldtwistle, at the weekend was depressingly familar.

It seems that not a week goes by without another life lost on the roads of East Lancashire.

Inevitably our attentions turn to the question: how can we make our roads safer?

If the answer was simple enough to sum up in this column there wouldn't be a problem.

I don't know what the answer is.

I do however know what the answer is not, and that's to lay blame and pass judgement on those involved in accidents.

The Lancashire Telegraph website received several posts regarding the young men involved in the Mellor death crash.

Some people said they had no sympathy for them, branding them "boy-racers" and claiming it was their own fault.

But condemning people who die in car crashes benefits nobody.

Perhaps those who take the moral high ground forget that these people are brothers, sons, uncles and friends and comments laying blame at their feet only hurts the people left behind.

I'm on holiday in North Wales at the moment where calls are being made for Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom to resign after he used images of a decapitated motorcyclist to illustrate his talk at a speeding seminar for journalists without the consent of his family.

The family of the biker weren't aware of his horrific injuries and were told only that he died upon impact.

Now they are distraught and furious.

What Mr Brunstrom did was lacking in respect, judgement and common sense.

It simply isn't enough to use shocking images to scare others into action, or post shocking messages condemning those involved in crashes.

That doesn't work.

Car accidents happen to even the best drivers in the blink of an eye and we should realise that when a crash happens it's often only by the grace of God that it was not us involved.