Sir, - Two of your correspondents on this topic (September 24th and 25th) are very keen to absolve the authorities of blame and to find fault with motorists, accusing some of us of "garbled reasoning". I am not impressed.
Of course motorists have responsibilities, but so do the Garda and the road authorities. Leaving aside all the moralising, motorists' behaviour is to some extent a product of their environment, and if that environment includes inappropriate law enforcement, bad road design, inadequate warnings of hazards and badly worn road markings, then behaviour will deteriorate, errors (sometimes fatal) will occur and we will have a high accident rate.
As for some of the solutions which have been advocated, limiting vehicle capability to the maximum legal speed (70 m.p.h. on motorways) would for one thing still allow drivers to cause mayhem on the 99 per cent of our roads where 70 m.p.h. is illegal and probably vastly in excess of what is safe.
The "good" stretches of the N11 which have been proved to be so lethal are in my opinion potentially dangerous even when drivers remain within the speed limit. The wide carriageways leave room for overtaking in the face of oncoming traffic, which is a hazardous and very common practice. Better provision of properly marked slow lanes for truck traffic on appropriate sections of road would reduce some of the frustrating delays which are probably a factor in impatient and dangerous driving. - Yours, etc., John Sheehan,
Pinewood Park,
Dublin 14.