ROAD tax is now based on CO2 emissions, so it obviously must be wrong to tax vehicles at a lower rate just because they are classed as “commercial”.

THOMAS Harrington, an advanced driving examiner, says (Letters, August 11) I contradict myself, but there is nothing contradictory in saying that driving lessons are a good idea but it should not be compulsory to have a minimum of 20 hours, although he claims 40 hours are needed.

YOU report (August 15) that the SIMI is campaigning to extend scrappage subsidies to protect the car industry.

THE proposed home defence legislation is quite unnecessary because the defence of legal excuse exists in common law, exonerating an otherwise illegal act if it can be justified by the circumstances, for example homicide in self-defence.

WITH the dismantling of our healthcare system so much in the news, we would do well to compare it with the US and British systems.

ALAN Nolan of the SIMI says (Letters, June 21) that “as a result of scrappage, 17,500 more cars have been sold this year delivering an additional €70m in badly needed extra revenue to the exchequer”.

ACCORDING to NRA figures, the 60km section of the M3 cost €1 billion.

ACCORDING to figures from the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI), the scrappage scheme has cost the exchequer €15 million in lost revenue.

IT is dangerous for Seán McGovern (Letters, May 31) to claim it would take a very large dose of rodenticide to kill a human; the fatal dose for Warfarin is less than 1/10th gram – it is more poisonous to other species than rodents.

ENERGY Minister Eamon Ryan, in his bid to promote electric cars, says we’re “one of the first countries in the world with a national network, with a large amount of renewable power that we can use to power our cars… ”

IN her letter (May 3), Nicola-Marie O’Riordan complains about the NRA not being allowed to fund service areas on motorways.

THE gardaí recently announced they would be “clamping down” on cyclists who jump red lights or have no lights on their bikes, but their priority should be in pursuing motorists who break the law by endangering the lives of others.

JUDGING from newspaper letters, urban myths and misunderstanding abound regarding wind generation, with people thinking fossil fuel generation is working flat out day and night, regardless of energy generated by wind farms.

YOU report (April 29) that the NRA has warned Cork’s ring road will be “an M50 bottleneck” if the construction of offices, which would create 1,500 jobs, goes ahead.

JERRY Murphy of the Environmental Research Institute at UCC claims grasslands are under-utilised and could be used to make biofuels (April 15).

IN response to my letter of March 22, Kevin McCarthy says pedestrians are responsible for their own safety (Letters, April 5).

IT’S reported (March 24) that the new Galway-to-Limerick rail route will run at €2.4m loss.

WE shouldn’t get too carried away with the electric car razzmatazz.

FINE Gael leader Enda Kenny’s promise recently to abolish the €10 air travel tax is crude populism.

THE news that China’s oil consumption rose by 28% last year and the admission by the International Energy Authority (IEA) that the world’s oil reserves are being depleted at 6.2% a year should be a wake-up call.

REGARDING the Trevor Sargent affair, your columnist Ryle Dwyer (February 27) justifies hounding him by referring to a fictitious attempt decades ago to bribe and threaten a garda in an attempt to avoid prosecution, which quite rightly would be illegal in all countries.

NONE of the motorists who deluged newspapers recently with letters about potholes caused by the extreme weather think road-users should pay for the repairs, assuming the money comes from some magic pot of gold, or that it will be diverted from other government expenditure such as healthcare or education or, absurdly, demand the costs are paid from the carbon tax.

JIM FORDE (Letters, January 25) is naive to believe US troops will withdraw from Iraq in a year – they have been saying that ever since the invasion seven years ago.

THERE are increasing numbers of SUVs on the road armed with bull bars, despite them being proscribed under EU directive 2005/66/EC.

THE RSA’s advert ‘Crashed lives’ shows the tearful father of a man killed by an articulated lorry blaming his son for his own death because he was not wearing a fluorescent jacket.

WHAT a pity, with winter weather causing dangerous driving conditions and disruptions to air travel, that we ripped up three-quarters of Ireland’s railways half a century ago.

PROSECUTING motorists for putting For Sale signs on their cars (November 11) is not just stupid — it’s malicious and petty-minded.

SO MEP Maireád McGuinness promotes growing biofuel crops for transport, which she says could represent 4% of diesel consumption (only 2.5% of vehicle fuel).

PUBLICANS and the drinks industry are largely to blame for the demise of pubs. Draft real ale is unavailable in 99% of Irish pubs – there is a selection of overpriced insipid chemical lagers, one-keg beer, and thankfully three stouts, all of which are the same strength – about 4.5%.

YET again, the RSA is proposing crazy, impractical, ineffective and unfair ideas to reduce road crashes.

THE letter from the road safety group PARC (August 10) quotes statements by Dr David Bedford which he claims are based on research.

HAVE those opposing the closure of Bantry A&E and the dismantling of the health service in general stopped to think where the money to save them, given the economic crisis, is going to come from?

THERE is no harm in incorporating green issues into the driving test, as announced recently by Transport Minister Noel Dempsey and Noel Brett of the RSA.

SO, according to the Minister Eamon Ryan and your journalist Clare O’Sullivan (Irish Examiner, April 14), electric cars are the latest silver bullet to solve the problems of global warming and dependence on imported fossil fuels. This follows hot on the heels of now-discredited biodiesel.

YOU report (March 10) the IFA claim that dog attacks on sheep are carried out by “family pets”, but the fact is that many, if not most, attacks are carried out by farmers’ dogs.

IN her letter (March 7), Jacqueline Cotter rightly criticises the cost to the Irish taxpayer of €8,000 for Martin Cullen’s helicopter trip to Kerry.

YOU report that a “daily drink raises women’s cancer risk” (February 25). A statistical correlation cannot prove causality. No competent scientist would make such a claim and it is irresponsible of Cancer Research UK to do so.

IN his letter (February 26), Ultan Murphy claims atmospheric CO2 has increased by 0.004% since 1975.

YOUR columnist Ryle Dwyer, referring to traumatic brain injury (February 14), claims “the road safety campaign launched in 1998 has clearly been a success. The monthly fatality rate dropped from 39 per month in 1997 to 23 per month in 2008”.

GIVEN their spectacular failure, and the present economic climate, how can banks justify giving their employees a pay rise and continuing to dish out bonuses to directors?

THE Road Safety Authority (RSA) is correct in saying there is no room for complacency in the ‘low’ number of road deaths; the true number is far higher.

REGARDING the issue of the Cork-Swansea ferry, one question demands a straight answer — why are there two services — the Irish Ferries Rosslare-Pembroke and the Stena Fishguard-Rosslare — both sailing at almost identical times on almost identical routes, and bothalmost completely empty?

IT was refreshing recently to hear Environment Minister John Gormley say that spending on public transport must take priority over spending on roads, but this policy will fail unless people adopt it.

I WISH someone would explain exactly what the Corrib gas pipeline protest is about.