It is less than three weeks since Mike Clancy was hit by a speeding car in Partingdale Lane in Mill Hill.

The 60-year-old carpenter suffered injuries including a hairline fracture to his leg and claimed there was no pavement or any other way for him to get out of the way of oncoming traffic.

So it was with some trepidation that I joined parents and children who live on the lane as they braved the traffic on their walk to school on Tuesday morning.

The first thing to strike me, however, was not a speeding Land Rover, but the narrowness of the road. There is no room for a pedestrian and even a small car in one lane. Traffic has to stop for pedestrians and wait for an opportunity to overtake.

The rush-hour drivers who use the lane as a short cut between Mill Hill and Woodside Park did not take kindly to sharing the road with pedestrians some hooted, many looked annoyed and brushed past within inches.

In fact, my fellow walkers were struck three times by wing mirrors as drivers rushed to work or school.

Leanne Woyda, walking her seven-year-old son Guy to school on The Ridgeway, said: "The cars won't get out of your way, they hit you if you're walking down. They expect you to get into the gutter and they get really frustrated because they can't get round you."

I found myself walking in mud and over twigs and plants to get as far off the road as I could. At the bend where Mr Clancy was struck, a brick wall meets the tarmac.

"You simply have to walk in the road and you cannot see traffic coming towards you. It is not a comfortable feeling."

Glyn Harris said he moved to Partingdale Lane so he could walk his two daughters, aged seven and nine, to school in the morning.

Since the lane was reopened to traffic in December, he is too frightened to walk along it with his children, and drives the short distance to Frith Manor School in Lullington Garth.

He often has to park so far from the school entrance that it takes longer to walk from his car than it did from home.

He said: "If this was a rural road I could understand, but it's not. It's a rat-run. Without pavements, it's dangerous."

The council lined the entrance to Partingdale Lane at the Lullington Garth junction with cones on Monday afternoon. They are intended to stop parents creating an obstacle to traffic by parking there when dropping off or picking up their children at Frith Manor School.

Parents complained they have been parking there for years but the council believes they pose a danger since the road was reopened to traffic in December.

But the traffic will cease by Monday after residents won a High Court injunction to temporarily close the road last week.

Another hearing within the next few months will decide whether the road should remain permanently closed.

We asked Councillor Brian Coleman, cabinet member for the environment, whether it was safe for pedestrians to use the lane but he had no comment.

January 28, 2003 15:30