Upon reading the news about the NDR in the press (November 5) I found I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Apparently there are "lessons to be learned" because the accident rate is high on the Northern Distributor Road.

Talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted!

How many letters have been printed here saying this very thing?

There are two lessons these road planners need to learn.

The first lesson is to try and bear in mind the catastrophic miscalculation of the cost of the "road to nowhere" after their initial budget was overshot by a whopping £60m of our much-needed county funding (nearly a 40pc underestimate).

The second lesson is more important.

If you lay miles of new, smooth, wide, sweeping tarmac you will automatically encourage your average motoring "numpty" to drive like Lewis Hamilton — only without the skills but with the inevitable crashes.

Their casual ineptitude with regard to our safety and our money needs addressing before we let these people get their pencils and paper out to draw any more roads for us.

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