Sir, - Page 4 of your edition of September 10th was devoted almost exclusively to gridlock and deaths on our roads. There is a factor common to both of these terrible problems which seems to have been ignored - neglect. Neglect of our road system by successive governments.
Ireland has First-World volumes of traffic, First-World performance cars and Third-World roads. What do we expect but a high accident rate? Accident blackspots are not, as the Government would have us believe, concentrations of drunk or speeding drivers. They are sections of road which are incapable of taking modern traffic and are therefore dangerous.
There are five of these blackspots within two miles of my home which have been there for 20 years and two junctions on the N11 within five miles of my home that are so dangerous that it is tantamount to criminal negligence that they exist at all.
Until the necessary funding is allocated to bring our road system up to date we will continue to have to read, with sadness, reports such as those on page 4. - Yours, etc., Jude T. Lindsay,
Rathdown Park, Greystones, Co Wicklow.