Sir, - I had suspected it for some time but in the past two years or so my worst fears have been proven: Dublin is home to several thousand pedestrians and cars that are invisible.
I'm sure many of your readers have noticed this disturbing phenomenon around the city, particularly around newly installed sets of traffic lights. You approach a green light on your way home to find that for no apparent reason it turns to amber then red, and lo and behold there is neither pedestrian nor car to be found coming from the right or left. The answer, good citizen, is simple: the other car and its occupants are invisible, nowhere to be bloody well seen. I have noticed this all over the northside of the city and I'm sure there's no reason to suspect that it's any different on the grid locked arteries of the southside.
Unnecessary and inefficient traffic lights are springing up all over the place, from the lowliest T-junction to the busiest roundabouts. I'm sure the workers who install them have a good excuse - "We're only doin' our job, squire, the boss tells us where to put them!" But surely they use the roads also and must realise that a large proportion of these instruments of Satan don't function as they should.
Lamha suas all of your readers who've noticed it - lights turning against free-flowing traffic to allow the invisible cars and pedestrians to pass, left- and right-hand filter lights turning green for no one, queues of cars on suburban roads waiting because the "green man" says so, exits from housing estates having their very own brand spanking new lights installed on otherwise easily navigable T-junctions.
So when you're out there on the mean streets, folks, take care, for "the unseen" are everywhere. Alternatively, vent your spleen to Dublin Corporation abut yet another cock-up. - Yours, etc.,
James Gouldsbury, Beaumount Woods, Dublin 9.