Metric speed limits and safety

Madam, - We should be no strangers to kilometres - after all, the first metric road distance signs were erected back in 1980

Madam, - We should be no strangers to kilometres - after all, the first metric road distance signs were erected back in 1980. It has taken 25 years to change the speed-limit signs, and perhaps it will take a further 25 years for the NRA to remove some of the new signs which have been erected with little or no thought whatsoever.

We may laugh at the signs which allow us to drive at 100 k.m.h. on pot-holed national routes, or 80 k.m.h. down country lanes on single-track roads with grass growing between two lines of worn tarmacadam, or at the new dual-carriageway roads of motorway standard with speed limits of 50 and 60 k.m.h.

But we must ask the question: who is responsible for this travesty? After all, one of the main reasons for the new speed limits was to improve road safety, and from what I have seen so far, I think not. - Yours, etc.,

ROBIN D. HEATHER, Seapoint, Dunbur Lower, Wicklow Town.