DRIVING on roads around York, one becomes aware of the activities of the Council Road Control Freak and his Paint Vandal chum.

Our roads now resemble a confused jumble of red, green, yellow and white zones and instructions that would appear to assist those unable to recognise or negotiate roundabouts and junctions without someone to hold their hand.

I thought that was what the driving test was meant to determine.

Heworth roundabout is a classic with a mass of instructions, go and no go zones, even telling cyclists how to turn left or go straight on. This would be laughable if it were not our money that was being wasted.

To approach a junction and encounter five sets of rumble zones, together with red no-go zones, green cycle go zones and direction arrows is simply control madness and does nothing to alleviate the fact that the ring road should have been a dual carriageway in the first place.

Our roundabouts are even adorned with arrows directing us which way to go round them.

One hesitates to ask whether this plethora of zones, stripes and instructions has brought us under control. The thought of an army of clipboard carriers producing yet more statistics is too much to contemplate.

I trust that our council is not spending the £20,000 per day collected from hard-pressed motorists on decorating our roads to the point where they start to resemble what I understand to be a tart's boudoir.

J A Whitmore,

Springfield Road,

Upper Poppleton, York.

Updated: 09:39 Wednesday, May 04, 2005