Sir, - I think that people today have a total blind spot about cars and roads. Eighteen years ago I had a son killed in a road accident and ever since I have seen roads and traffic in a different way. I see high-powered vehicles travelling rapidly towards each other, on a twisty and often bumpy surface.
When they pass each other there is often only two or three feet between them - two or three feet between continuing life and almost certain death.
I feel that each time you survive a meeting of this sort it is a miracle, yet we do all the time, every day, often hundreds of times a day. I drive all the time but I think of this every time I meet a car.
If one was to devise a "ride" at a fairground with two machines made of metal hurtling towards each other at 60 miles an hour with no barriers between them to stop them colliding, this "ride" would certainly be banned, yet people still seem amazed by deaths in traffic accidents. I think that future generations will be astonished that driving under present conditions was ever allowed.
At the very least, I think there should be an enforceable limit on all country roads of 30 m.p.h. And I am quite sure that it is madness to let provisional drivers out on their own. - Yours, etc.,
Mrs Rosalind Davies, Newport, Co Mayo.