1- Dear Editor,
Portugal is like Belgium! When they are behind the wheel, they turn into maniacs and know just one driving position – foot down – and ignore all traffic signs.
Re-developing the EN125 with improved road surface will only lead to further increased driving speeds with more speed related road deaths.
The only way to make Portuguese roads more ‘tourist’ friendly and safe is to maximise the speed checks, reduce the maximum speed to 80/90Kph and to place more speed traffic lights (they are good in Portugal) to control speed but with red-light cameras because the majority of drivers ignore that kind of speed control.
All my friends who visit Portugal are excited about life over there but…are scared of driving around with traffic lunatics!
MAX VAN PEER, Belgium
2 – Dear Editor,
I’m sure we all welcome the money to be spent on the EN125 (rather than on more paperwork checks on passing motorists). Other than the lack of experience and alcoholic overdosing of drivers, the principal causes of accidents on the EN125 – as in other countries – are careless overtaking and turning behaviour at road junctions.
The provision of more roundabouts is an excellent proposal, as long as drivers stick to the rules and forget the old ‘righthand priority’, but surely more highway division at bends and blind hill crests (as recently provided at São Lourenço) would cut out the overtaking problem and cannot be a very expensive traffic engineering job. It would be too expensive to have dual carriageway for the whole length of the road.
This still leaves us with the ‘tail-gating’ problem which is a matter of experience…..
I hope the Highway Authority have taken these thoughts into consideration in this planning.
ALAN A YEO, Sta Bárbara de Nexe
