MOANA LISA

NO I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT the famous Leonardo da Vinci painting. I'm just having a moan and a rant. In fact, the title should be MOANA HELEN but nobody would understand the joke then would they!!

Today I'm moaning about Penang road markings. It's incredible how badly done and, dare I say it, STUPID they are. In fact, it's got to the stage where every time I see a road being tarmacked, I think to myself, "I wonder how they're going to cock it up!" and inevitably, they do. WHAT IS THE POINT, I ask you, if they're going to spend a fortune repairing, widening and tarring a road surface beautifully, only to bugger up the markings?

I've seen it happen umpteen times - they put down the white markings only to realise they've got it wrong. Then they paint those out with black paint, and repaint more white lines - which are still wrong. A few years down the line when the weather has deteriorated the black paint and the white lines beneath show through, you are left with so many lines you don't know which one is which.

WHEN OH WHEN are the authorities going to learn that, although obviously courtesy and good driving are prerequisites of road safety, equally so are PROPER and SENSIBLE road markings. Some of our markings are so bad that they are positively dangerous.

WHOEVER has heard of a 2-3 lane MAIN ROAD (and I'm talking in particular about the town to Batu Ferringhi Road here because that's the one I travel most often, although there are many more around which are equally stupid) which has one of the heaviest traffic loads around, changing into a secondary road whenever there is a right or left turn? There you are, driving along quite serenely - or as serenely as you can with Penang drivers - and suddenly your road becomes a right turning lane, and you have to desperately try to swerve to the middle lane, which becomes the ONLY lane going FORWARD because the LEFT lane is blocked by cars parked along the side. Sometimes I wonder if they hired monkeys to paint the road marks on, because I cannot conceive of any sane person making such a hash of it.

Another example is at Shamrock Beach, where the road (again we are talking about a PRIMARY road here) going into town suddenly becomes a right turn into the new housing development, forcing drivers who are going on to pull to the left, then rejoin the main road again AFTER the turn. EXCUSE ME but I do believe the main road users have right of way and NOT the ones turning right.

It's a miracle that we have had no major accidents so far - as it is we have our fair share already - but that may be pure luck, and it's only a matter of time. PLEASE whoever is in charge - do review and correct all wherever necessary before something does happen.