HOW sad that so many 'morons' should chose to publicly display their extreme ignorance of what the roadworks planners are trying to achieve in their sometimes vitriolic responses to the excellent letter penned by Jayne Neville.

How can any person even attempt to justify the unlawful blocking of a road as some have in these pages. If ever there was justification for people having their driving licences revoked, these correspondents causing the roadblocks must surely be case in point.

Your correspondents seem so blinded by their 'thou shall not pass' attitude because they feel Jayne Neville may have gained some minor time and distance advantage over them, that they fail to realise that it is they who are the cause of so much of the disruption on Bolton's roads which could so easily be reduced by correct road usage.

The objective of any roadworks planning is twofold. It is to allow traffic to flow through the affected area as quickly as possible and, secondly, it is to prevent unnecessary disruption to surrounding roads close to the roadworks. Whether this has been successful or not on the A666 is a matter for separate discussion.

Whilst these drivers may be achieving their pyrrhic victory in that they have blocked both lanes so that no driver can pass them in their ivory automobiles, unfortunately the significant tailback behind them causes unnecessary misery to many other drivers on roads which would normally be unaffected but which have an intersecting junction with the A666, typically the Farnworth sliproad northbound and Bradford Street southbound.

I can reliably inform these hopefully ignorant few that the purpose of having two lanes filtering down into one is to form two lanes of queuing traffic of equal length. Thus two shorter queues form rather than the current long single queue and, as Jayne Neville arrives on the outside lane, she queues up alongside on the inside.

No single driver gains any advantage over the other and both lanes of traffic progress towards the cones, and as a reasonable distance from the 'pinch' is reached, so one driver politely gives way to one car only, with both flowing into the cones.

This may seem like Utopia but if more drivers took note of Jayne Neville's comments you would be surprised what we could achieve together.

The essence of Jayne Neville's letter is not that she is entitled to waltz in at the front of the queue, but that two lanes are there for all to use with equal right. They are there to ensure shorter queues in terms of distance so to prevent disruption to surrounding roads. If you are not prepared to use both lanes correctly then you should move over and not block both off for the use of others.

To the vigilantes: Stop being so selfish, stop blocking the roads and show some consideration for all other road users. To Jayne Neville: Go straight to the front of the queue for having the guts to stand up against the ignorant bullies.

Michael Vaughan

Belmont

n/a@hughes.icl.net