Last Thursday evening at about 17:45, I was driving alongside the Withdean Stadium, going straight up Tongdean Rise, when a boy, aged about 11, came down the hill on a skateboard, in the road and at great speed.

He turned in front of me to go on to the pavement on the opposite side of the road and fell off his board.

Fortunately for everyone, it was on to the kerb. If he had fallen in the road, I don't know whether I would have been able to stop in time to avoid hitting him.

With my eyes on the boy, I drove up the hill and over his skateboard which was still in the road. The boy followed me up the hill, brandishing his broken skateboard and saying "look" most indignantly.

I stopped the car and said he was lucky it wasn't him. He asked if I lived near and when I said no, he informed me: "Well, you shouldn't be here then."

I replied he shouldn't be skateboarding in the road, which he denied, saying he had been on the pavement.

By this time, a car behind was tooting for me to drive on, which I did.

The boy shouted after me, with increasing anguish: "****ing hell!"

I arrived, shaking, at my destination, partly because I was angry at the little so-and-so and partly because I thought how my whole life could have changed if I had hit the boy with my car.

I have two points to make. Firstly, to the parents of the boy who came home with a broken skateboard: Thank your lucky stars he is still alive.

Secondly: Why are our young people so angry? Where does it come from? I am not even 50 yet but feel like a very senior citizen asking: "What happened to respect?"

I have two teenage sons who have done many things wrong in their lives but they have never spoken in such a way to anyone older than them, nor, do I think, have they felt the need to.

I am a great believer that everything in our lives happens for a reason.

I cannot help thinking that, if I hadn't broken that skateboard, that boy might have died that day.

But he didn't give the impression he would be any more careful in the future.

-June Cook, Peacehaven