A chara, - Your correspondent S. P. Nangle (September 12th) seems to describe driving slowly "as a particular form of dangerous driving". To me, this is nonsense.
He goes on to make a list of problems which includes both speeding and stopping in box junctions. I see no comparison between them. Stopping in a box junction is inconsiderate, but it does not kill hundreds of people a year. This kind of confusion is quite common. A substantial number of motorists (and many road engineers) seem to think delays are as important a problem as safety.
Your correspondent gives an example of being blinded by an oncoming driver and asks me if speed can be blamed should he hit someone. Say the person (s)he was faced with on seeing the road again was not a cyclist who should have had lights as in the example but a pedestrian crossing the road. In that case, I would definitely say that S. P. Nangle was travelling too fast. It is the responsibility of the motorist to ensure that, whatever the conditions, (s)he is not travelling at such a speed that (s)he cannot stop in time. Clearly if your correspondent could not see the road (s)he should not have continued to travel at 55 m.p.h.
Possibly uniquely in the world, Albanian law provides (or used to provide) that a motorist who knocks down a child is always responsible for the accident - the rationale being that you should never travel so fast that you can't stop if a child runs onto the road. I am unable to disagree with this. However, I suspect that some of your letter-writers would consider driving at such a safe speed to be "perpetrating tailbacks", and suitable for prosecution. - Is mise,
Howth, Co Dublin.