Sir, - Approaching the Firhouse exit of the M50 from the north, there are five speed-limit signs. They are all in miles per hour, all placed after the one-kilometre-to-exit sign. The speed-limit sequence is this : 30, 50, 40, 30, 40.
This is insane and dangerous. Who is responsible and accountable? What local-authority representative can I telephone to complain? If some politically-correct roads engineer decides to stick a speed-limit sign in a barrel (see the M50!), does that have legal force?
This crazy sequence of speed-limits is now rigidly enforced by speed-cameras. Drivers know this, and there's now a scary pile-up at the Firhouse exit as vehicles are forced down to 30 mph on a carriageway manifestly suitable for higher speeds. Imposition of arbitrary low speed-limits has nothing to do with road safety, but it is a nice little earner for the authorities as the all-seeing camera hauls in unsuspecting motorists driving quite safely.
It is easy to place a camera on a roadside and automatically rack up the required quota of convictions by catching those exceeding an unreasonably low limit. It is easy for a garda to sit on a motorway overpass and do the same. It is difficult, and requires actual hard work and effort, to catch the 80-mph lunatics on small county roads. That is where more than 90% of fatalities occur. But we can rely on our esteemed authorities always to take the easy, thought-free, work-free way out. In doing so, of course, they entirely miss the point that speed-limits should be road-safety mechanisms and not cynical revenue-generators. - Yours etc.,
Conor Sexton, Castleside Drive, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.