Roadworks and the Angelus are here to stay
Monday August 27 2007
? I am wondering what it takes to be in charge of roadworks on the N7. Perhaps having one's brain removed might be a start.
Coming along the N7 recently, I went to the left of a 'roadworks' fork in the road. This took me off the main road without warning, and up to a roundabout which I went through in a bid to re-join the N7, and followed the zig-zag of bollards and cones.
This took me back on to the main road, without any warning about traffic merging. About 2 km further, I followed the 'bear left' signs to find myself filtering back into traffic again without warning. No doubt the empty doyens of road safety would say 'slow down'. I was going slow. The problem is that stupidity is hard to combat even if you are super-alert and travelling at a snail's pace.
It would be nice also if, on the M11 southbound, it would be possible to cover the '40 k.p.h.' signs when there are no roadworks taking place -- like all night most of the time.
Interestingly, I saw a flashing neon sign which appeared to be in Polish, at a guess saying 'bear left'. Are there people driving on our roads who do not understand warning signs in English? It gives a whole new meaning to the term 'Non-national road'. I have no difficulty with non- nationals, but everyone in any country should understand warning signs in the native language, or not be driving.
Anthony Halpin
Herbert Road
Bray
Co Wicklow
• It would seem The Angelus is here to stay. Perhaps RTE could also allot some time to showing how science enriches our lives allowing our current standard of life expectancy of 80+ years thanks to antiseptics, anitbiotics and modern surgical methods, because if it were up to religion, the bible and "holy" men, we'd be still living in the Dark Ages with a mortality rate to match.
And maybe following 'An Evening Prayer', we could have 'An Evening Experiment', which shows science working and achieving empirical results, unlike prayer, which has a 100pc failure rate.
Gary Byrne
IFSC
Dublin 1
