BUMPING over Bristol's pot holes, it seems that all forms of traffic manage-ment (the installation of forests of signs, posts, lights and confusing road graffiti) take precedence over providing decent roads.

Worse, as a safety engineer, I note that most road "safety" activities (sharpened bends, narrowed roads, jutting kerbs, chicanes, obstacles, speed humps) actually make the road more dangerous at all speeds.

This is a safety philosophy unique to traffic management and some analysis of accidents suggests that more people are killed in collisions with street furniture than as a direct result of excessive speed.

I sympathise with engineers trying to deal with traffic, so I offer a few suggestions:

1. Safety can be improved by: better driver training and denial of licences to those who are psychologically unsuited; roads that are inherently safe and less clutter and confusion.

2. Introduce a tax regime based on the product of vehicle weight, road area, power and engine size. Small cars would pay less, medium size cars (even seven-seaters) a little more, but vast environmental disasters could pay up to 10 times the current rate.

3. Permit only low tax index vehicles in the city, eliminating the costs of congestion charging.

Consequences: fewer cars, smaller cars, less pollution, lower speeds, fewer severe accidents, smaller parking spaces, quicker journeys at lower speeds, improbably quicker journeys at lower speeds.

Let's change direction. Instead of "more, bigger, faster, heavier" met with "control, restrict, abuse, punish", could we have "less, smaller, slower" met with "simplify, enable, encourage"?

Cliff Bond, Long Ashton.