The editorial of last month concentrated on older drivers, I suppose those over 75 and whether they, or rather we, can be considered ‘safe’ on our roads.

In my opinion drivers who dislike or hate driving, no matter their age, will never be a success on our somewhat crowded roads. We as drivers must be able to control our vehicles, not only at our maximum speed, which is, as some of you may be aware of, 80 km/h, but at slow speeds in traffic or in towns and villages where the normal speed restrictions keep us at anything from 35 to 50 km/h.

I have commented on numerous occasions that it is an offence to drive below the speed of a line of vehicles in case one lone motorist is holding up a kilometre of other vehicles (providing that they are within the speed limit in force on that particular road). This problem has been compounded by the ADT and more recently Transport Malta architects who are unable or unwilling to redesign the centre marking to allow traffic to overtake slow moving vehicles whenever there is space enough for the normal modern saloon capable of getting from 0-100 km/h in about 13 seconds. Obviously there are thousands of upper quadrant cars, saloons and rag-tops, you know the sort of things, BMWs, Jaguars, Audis, Alfa Romeos, Toyotas, Mercedes Mitsubishis and Subarus, quite apart from Astons, Ferraris, Porsches and Maseratis which reach 100 km/h, not 80 km/h in anything from 4.7 to about eight seconds.

A great many of these rather well-made, extremely fast cars are being expertly driven or even raced by drivers well into their 70s and in some cases into their 80s.

These elderly petrol heads, while being incredibly experienced, safe and with a love for all things mechanical, are obviously in a horrible minority. There are thousands of elderly types who frankly think 50 km/h is too fast and so inconvenience, annoyance and frustration is caused to the rest of us but they may well be right if their reactions have seriously been affected, eyesight is poor or they drive with some serious physical disability.

There are thousands of elderly types who frankly think 50 km/h is too fast

If some of the funds that arrive in the licensing department were transferred into the examining side of things, we could employ a new set of driving examiners who would then concentrate on giving a driving test to all drivers with, for the sake of argument, more than 20 years of driving behind them. In reality many would fail as their driving skills have never been honed beyond rudimentary. If they wanted to continue driving they would perforce take a proper medical exam, some refresher lessons and so get au fait with the modern way of driving, especially in overcrowded village conditions or on main roads where it seems that 45-50 km/h is becoming the norm, especially if there is a speed camera set at anything up to 70 km/h like the one on the Mosta/Burmurrad road.

One can only assume that most elderly drivers have no idea what a speedometer is for and wander through speed cameras at a very slow speed.

I find it sad that speed/safety cameras have appeared on the St Paul’s Bay bypass once more. These cameras should only be placed at sites where there have been a number of fatalities or very serious accidents in a relatively short period of time, and the prevailing conditions at the site/s in question should be rectified to make the area safe as quickly as possible. We would be interested to find out from Transport Malta just how many fatalities and serious accidents have occurred at the camera sites over the past five years. From Transport Malta’s own publications, speed cameras should carry a 10 per cent leeway, and as this is a government road it must be assumed that we will not be booked till we reach 89 km/h.

Complaints from residents about noise have nothing to do with speed/safety cameras. Noise should be reduced by the erection of noise diffusion fencing along those areas adjacent to homes as is done right across Europe. I can see petrol heads getting so cross that they keep their noisy bikes and cars in a low gear simply to annoy the complainers.

Residents of San Pawl Tat-Tarġa are still being found guilty of illegal parking by the local tribunal expert who is under the mistaken impression that cars can only be parked in designated parking bays. Councils are in no way obliged to paint parking bays anywhere, and many don’t. In fact, when we were compiling The Highway Code, little attention was paid to legal parking bays except to advice motorists to “park within the lines where practicable”.