ONLY a few years ago someone at the Highways Agency thought it would be a good idea to install traffic lights on the entry slip-roads on motorways, ensuring that cars would have to proceed from a standstill onto a road where traffic could be legally moving at 70mph. The agency staunchly resisted complaints from experienced motorists regarding the stupidity of this, but then quickly withdrew the lights when common sense finally kicked in.

We now have a situation where possibly the same person has decided to install traffic lights on the exit slip road of the westbound carriageway at junction three on the M27, thereby creating dangerous traffic queues back onto the motorway proper.

The Highways Agency is defending this act of momentous stupidity by stating that the hold-ups that have mysteriously only just appeared are the result of traffic lights that have been at this junction for sometime (Letters, April 30).

I will try to explain the reality of the situation to the Highways Agency.

Yes, there have been lights at this junction for sometime now, they were on the roundabout itself and only stopped the few cars turning right onto the M271 towards Romsey. Most of the traffic then, as now, turning left onto the M271 towards the Nursling industrial estate and Redbridge.

It is a fact that the bulk of traffic using this exit was able to continue unhindered. The hold-ups at this junction now are due to the new lights and nothing else.

I trust that someone in the Highways Agency will be able to understand this simplistic explanation and that eventually these lights will just fade away.

ALAN KEBBELL, Southampton.