Drivers rule the roads as cyclists take big chances
I UNDERSTAND the Road Safety Authority (RSA) is seeking out deserving individuals on whom to bestow recognition for their contribution to safer driving.
That notion is all well and good but if the RSA is in need of a photo-shoot it should visit parts of my locality where the public roads have become a lifethreatening arena for cyclists.
I write as one who grew up with the building volume of road traffic as experienced in my almost 70 years of bicycle use.
As a car driver, I also observe the problems arising from that aspect of sharing the busy road.
For example many of the bicycleunfriendly iron grid covers embedded in the road surface could be located in the adjacent footpaths instead.
This improvement would allow cyclists greater ease to keep in to the side of the road, and out of the traffic’s way.
Also on many rural roads, the storm that is created by each speeding lorry has frightening effects on the cyclist.
Despite the big official push to put more cyclists on our roads there has been a lack of effort to ensure that the infrastructure is made safer for all users.
This will require the RSA to come out from their protective shell and communicate with the road users. As of now there are no useful means of contacting and informing this body, which needs to listen to our fears, our advice and our possible solutions.
DENIS O’HIGGINS, Aghintamy, Co. Monaghan.
Left could become right
LEFT-LEANING politicians are demanding ‘change’.
They are loudly supported by thousands of people who are willing to march under a slew of slogans and our national flag.
Sinn Féin has made a lot of very enticing promises. It is therefore no wonder that hordes will hit the streets to support the party. Fair enough! But what will happen if Sinn Féin comes to Government and finds itself unable to deliver on all its promises within a very short time?
It is likely that very many people who are now rooting for the left will take to the streets again, this time demanding another ‘change’ ... to the right!
It will only take a strong demagogue on social media to encourage them to wreck and riot. What then? EAMONN TYNAN, via email.
HSE’s narrow Options
AS LONG as the HSE’s My Options service fails to provide women in unplanned pregnancies with a full range of options besides just abortion, it should not continue to be funded by the Government.
When My Options was rolled out in 2019, the Government promised it would be provide women with ‘all their options’, including, but not limited to, abortion. It further states that staff do not engage in directive counselling.
Unfortunately, this has not been the case, as revealed in a study published by Students for Life in January 2022. Staff repeatedly encouraged women in doubt to make ‘an appointment [for an abortion] anyway’ – massively overstepping their boundaries.
Budget 2023 has several major shortcomings, including the renewed uncritical funding of My Options. Clearly this ‘service’ needs an urgent overhaul until sufficient training is provided to ensure women in unplanned pregnancies are given the option of receiving information on positive alternatives to abortion, and social welfare supports.
SIOBHÁN NIC CATHAIL, Ráth Ara, Contae Ros Comáin
Putin’s nuclear threat
IT IS amazing to see how surprised, shocked and indeed horrified politicians and media are at Putin’s declaration that he will use every means at his disposal, including nuclear destruction, to repel attacks on any part of Russia, including that which he has recently annexed from Ukraine.
Recent developments should be no surprise. Russia is a relatively small superpower with a population of only about 140 million.
Its combined adversaries boast something more than a billion people so Russia, at no time, could have hoped to field a conventional army to match the greater military numbers and might.
Superior nuclear power has always been Russia’s ‘ace in the hole’ and anyone who failed to realise that is rather dim.
Now that this is being brought into play, the West is faced with an enormous dilemma. Does it engage in nuclear warfare with potential to destroy everything, or does it back off?
Russia’s pariah status has been driven too far to give it any option other than total capitulation or relying on ‘first strikes’ to reduce retaliation. It will also probably realise that delays only strengthen its foes while sanctions and propaganda weaken it further.
The USA may hope ‘first strikes’ and devastation would be confined to Europe. But realising its great mistake of underestimating the nuclear threat and not allowing for an exit strategy, Europe can only hope it is not too late to beat the peace drum and, repudiating US policy of Russian annihilation at any cost, begin negotiations and removal of sanctions. Our futures may depend on decisions made in the next few weeks.