Madam, - The topic of road signage - and particularly the language these should be displayed in - has been in the news in recent days.
With an expanded European Union and ever-increasing international mobility of motorists (and pedestrians, come to that), would it not now make much greater sense to standardise road signs and road markings, in so far as it is possible, across the entire EU?
Preferably, road signs should be based not on the written word, but on well-designed icons, pictograms or other visual conventions that transcend spoken languages and are recognisable to as wide an audience as possible, irrespective of whether their mother tongue is English, Gaeilge, French, Estonian or Serbo-Croat.
To some extent this is done already, but there remains great variability across Europe in terms of the actual icons used and, especially, in their format, usage and deployment.
Take just one example: the sign for "Double bend ahead". In Britain, this sign always indicates, by the configuration of the picture, the direction of the first bend the motorist will encounter (left-hand or right). Here in Ireland, this is frequently not the case - a notable example was the signs at the skew bridge over the railway just south of Kildare, before the new bypass was opened.
I wonder how many British motorists have come to grief because they incorrectly assigned the same interpretation to the sign in Irish contexts that would be appropriate in the UK? As one goes even further afield, the variability and the potential for misunderstanding increases rapidly.
Standardised road signs would obviously not solve all problems of road safety but, I submit, would be a significant step in the right direction. - Yours, etc.,
DARIUS BARTLETT, College View, Midleton, Co Cork.