Death on Fishponds Road

Bristol lost a teenager on Monday: Junaid Nazir age 16, killed on Fishponds Road -in front of his own house. A taxi driver was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving, then released on bail. We don't know any other details.

One of our contributors went past the site on Tuesday evening -here are their comments:

This was an awful thing to happen, an awful thing to see. Junaid's friends and family were there -all of them utterly devastated. He left to go to school at Filton College, and instead of coming home after another day at school, he never came back. All his dreams are gone, all that is left are memories.

Every time his family leave the house, they are going to pass the place where this child -their son, their brother, their cousin - died.

It was really heartbreaking to be here, I tried really hard to get a photo of the flower and not all the friends and family, -as that wasn't right. They were very welcoming, but it's hard to cover this. No schoolkids should be placing flowers to mourn the needless death of one of their friends.

Afterwards, I went down Fishponds Road -never fun- then turned into Roygate Lane, then onto the railway path. Suddenly I'd gone from the friends and family mourning the death of a sixteen year old to the late summer peace and pleasantness of an almost Dutch walking and cycling route into the city. Yet what point is it in having such a lovely facility if you can't even get across a road 300 metres away alive?

The whole Bristol Traffic team extends our condolences to the family and friends -it will take a long time for everyone to come to terms with this, and -based on personal experience- nobody will ever really get over it. You can never forget.

We'd also like to hint to Evening Post that when they put up articles on tragic events such as Junaid's death, that either they disable comments or they monitor them so all four regular mad commenters don't just repeat their own prejudices -again, and again, and again. This is not the place for them.

Our normal service will be resumed in a few days. In the meantime, there is a growing monument in Fishponds to a failure of the entire "road safety" industry. Consider visiting it.