Sir, - How much more has the law-abiding, heavily taxed, private Irish motorist to suffer? Is it not enough to have to spend two hours or more on a journey to and from work which should take only 40 minutes in properly managed and regulated traffic? Is it not enough to be blinded at night by wrongly adjusted headlights, or frightened almost to heart attack when approached by a car with one headlight missing?
Is it not enough to be sprayed with muck from lorries and other vehicles leaving building sites and turning public roads into cross-country tracks?
After being exposed to these hazards on a daily basis the frustrated and shocked motorist tries to get away for the weekend to more hospitable parts of the country. But he is then confronted by convoys of trucks, container lorries, and other assorted heavy goods vehicles. What business is so important that new cars on a transporter have to moved at the weekend, or empty 40-foot containers have to be on the road on Saturday or Sunday?
How can our Continental neighbours afford to ban commercial vehicles from the road on weekends and give some well earned relief to the suffering, overtaxed, private motorist? And where, might I ask are the gardai? Driving on the bank holiday Saturday from Kildare to West Cork (212 miles) I saw not one Garda car, just heavy goods vehicles and speeding cars oblivious to the most basic road regulations.
But maybe we should not blame the speeding drivers. They just try to get away from this mess called Irish traffic. - Yours, etc., H. Dorsch,
Clane, Co Kildare.