Madam, - Rather than taking the valid criticisms of Kevin Myers on board, Kevin O'Donohoe, Garda press officer, vainly attempts to discredit them by quoting irrelevant statistics in relation to Garda Síochána activity on the N81 (January 28th).
Supt O'Donohoe is missing the point. Kevin Myers's article was written to highlight the lack of visible policing on our roads, while utilising some journalistic licence. I believe that Supt O'Donohoe's letter is symptomatic of the Garda's apathetic approach to modern traffic policing.
While I am not a regular user of the N81, I commute the 50 miles between Gorey and Dublin on the N11. In over 18 months of regular commuting, apart from seeing a handful of fixed speed traps which are manned every couple of weeks on some of the safest, straightest stretches of road, I have never seen a Garda presence on our roads.
I have never been stopped at a roadblock, never had my seat-belt checked, never had my tyres checked, never had my lights checked, never been checked for tax, insurance or NCT and never had my licence checked. Every day I see trucks with unsafe loads, fallen debris on the road, drivers using mobile phones, people driving without seat-belts, children without seat-belts, dangerous overtaking, cars with defective brake lights, cars with fog lights on in clear daylight, vehicles with bald tyres, trucks and trailers with no numberplates and drunk drivers.
My experience leads me to have no confidence in the Garda Síochána's ability to police our roads and I agree with Kevin Myers that our police force is "chronically, pathologically dysfunctional". - Yours, etc.,
PHILIP LEONARD, Monaseed, Co Wexford.
Madam, - Kevin Myers's recent articles about the N81 contain more than a grain of truth. The sand lorries on this road do indeed grit both roads and car windscreens as they travel well above their HGV speed limit. As a result, the elaborate tracery of road safety markings and ghost islands painted on the road by Wicklow County Council at great expense in recent weeks is already largely obliterated by a Flanders mire several centimetres deep. This mud is filthy in wet weather and lethal in frost.
And yet we are almost happy with the situation, since it is an improvement on what went on in the past. Thousands of tonnes of hospital and other hazardous waste were openly trundled along the N81, with the various enforcement authorities apparently turning a blind eye. - Yours, etc.,
HUGO BRADY BROWN, Stratford on Slaney, Co Wicklow.