A chara, - Your correspondents Sally O'Brien and Liam Cox want gardai to devote themselves to making traffic move faster. Those who drive at speeds not fast enough for the liking of these letter-writers should be prosecuted for being in their way. Why stop there, indeed? Ms O'Brien and Mr Cox are clearly important enough to be given roads of their own. Failing this, maybe the fire service could find a few spare sirens would allow them to push aside those whom they describe as being "discourteous" because they drive slowly (i.e. with due care and consideration for others).
Another possibility springs to mind. How about allocating points to drivers every time they kill a hedgehog or someone's cat, the clearest evidence that they are travelling at speed? And what about the pedestrians and cyclists who seem to think they have a right to use the public road? How are they to be dealt with? After all, in the words of a Los Angeles traffic engineer, "the pedestrian remains the main obstacle to the free movement of traffic". Every year in the Republic alone over 400 people are killed in on the roads. In Europe as a whole the figure from WHO statistics is 350 a day. These deaths are described as accidents, but usually result from a decision by a driver to travel at a dangerous speed. The issue of your paper in which Mr Cox's letter appeared contained reports of two fatal crashes on rural roads in Ireland, a hit-and-run killing in Dublin, and Princess Diana's death in Paris. I find it hard to believe that anyone can write to newspapers asking for traffic to move faster. Is life worth so little? - Is mise,
(Cllr) DAVID HEALY,
Green Party,
Howth, Co Dublin