CONGESTION CURE • I feel I must write in reply to Roger Stratton's letter (CM. 11-17 January).
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I am pretty sure that every driver on the road can by now tell you that the major cause of congestion, and lost tempers, at contraflows or lane reductions, is the failure of car drivers, and a few truck drivers too, to acknowledge warning signs which are placed some distance in advance.
Stratton bemoans the fact that lorries in the nearside lane wouldn't let him and others in.
I wonder how much time these people gave themselves to get over? I have driven for 10 years and see this same occurrence all the time, people racing up the outside of a line of trucks to try and force their way in al the cones.
I have even experienced car drivers overtaking me on the inside when the nearside lane has been blocked.
I believe there is no need for tailbacks at all, but how do you teach patience and stop arrogant and ignorant behaviour?
M P Fisher,
Cannock, Staffs.
KNIGHTS OF THE ROAD
• I am writing to you after reading a letter entitled "Driver Training" from Roger Stratton of Devizes where he criticises truck drivers (CM 11-17 January).
I am physically disabled and don't drive, but I am able to go for trips with an owner-driver friend of mine as a passenger when I am on holiday. I do, however, travel daily in a coach up and down the Al between Huntingdon and Peterborough with those roadworks in the middle of Sawtu.
Unfortunately, my observatkms show there are many bad drivers, a few truck drivers included, but the vast number of truckers are "Knights of the Road". I have seen truck drivers changing flat tyres for car drivers and also doing other good favours where the average car driver couldn't have given a morikies.
As far as roadworks are concerned, the majority of trucks are in the right lane in the first place and it's the car drivers that are in the lane that is coned off, Further down, they then try and beat everybody else to where the lanes become single.
Some car drivers aren't fit to ride pushbikes let alone drive cars. As for the driving instructors being unhappy about the standard of driving, all that goes to prove is that they are no good at teaching drivers how to do it properly.
Robert Watson,
Buckden, Huntingdon, Cambs.