"People in the office are always telling me their particular traffic problems. Being a motoring journalist attracts them, I suppose. Eventually I decided to collect them." He handed me a sketch map. "Here’s a just a few."

We were four motoring writers from geographically differing regions, sipping coffee in a hotel lounge close by a significant interchange over Dublin’s lengthening M50. We were preparing for a mission. Not for God, but for the long-suffering motorist in the metropolis.

The latest extension of the M50 motorway impressed. I grasped for landmarks, as we ascended the foothills of the Dublin Mountains. For some moments I was lost in a succession of overbridges, retaining walls and manicured slopes along the gently winding superb new motorway.

Somehow our driver brought us to Sandyford via Dundrum. At the exit/entrance to the village - where once I lived - we hesitated to study the traffic calming constriction that generates many complaints by its users. Its complex of curving kerbs begs engineering surgery to ease the passage of traffic entering and leaving the village. An intrusive ‘choke’ has been created that both confuses drivers and abuses tyre walls.

Next we spent time circulating the nearby Leopardstown interchange and attempting to unravel the causes of complaint. The separate curved lane feeding cityward traffic from the Sandyford direction onto - but separated from - the roundabout proper intrigued. We spectated as the traffic merged uneasily and shifted itself past the complex intersection at mid day. The detached and curving lane, apparently intended to ease traffic citywards, accelerates Sandyford traffic leftwards only to confront it immediately with a moving line of parallel traffic exiting the roundabout proper at a different velocity. Drivers in the separated lane cannot possibly twist their necks sufficiently to study the column of traffic approaching acutely from their right, into which they hope to merge. This obviously creates a hazard. The logic of this ‘separated’ lane is unclear. It might be better to eliminate it.

Returning along the M50 and nearing the Westlink Bridge, we noted the inclined sliproad on the left, just short of the bridge. Its merging traffic creates snarl-ups at busy times. Articulated vehicles must necessarily swing out and into the second lane of M50 traffic in order to execute their turn to parallel the line of traffic into which they merge. Hopefully the advent of the second toll bridge will permit a needed improvement at this point.

As we motored on we discussed the absence of guardrails on the central divide of many Irish motorways. One of our party recounted a recent conversation with a road expert from another European country. Explaining this facet of Irish motorways, his listener expressed distinct amazement – "no guardrail? ... but-"? (And then he apparently became lost for words and threw his hands in the air).

Approaching close to Dublin Airport out attention was drawn to the right hand concrete kerb between the guardrail and the yellow line. Deeply stained and discoloured, it is virtually invisible in poor conditions of light. The eye is distracted from it by the combination of the more dominant guardrail and the yellow line on the road surface. An inadvertent mounting of a wheel thereon would very likely wrest control of a car from its driver.

Approaching close to the airport roundabout, the closely spaced agglomeration of signs confuses. There is insufficient time for a driver to absorb the information presented so confusingly on so many mislocated signs. It is a sad example of the consistent poor quality of Irish road signage. Surely this strategic national junction serving so many visitors merits carefully designed and generous overhead ‘gantry’ signs to unequivocally direct travellers on their various ways – indeed a sequence of such signs is needed. Their location and size of lettering would also need to permit adequate time for mental digestion of the information displayed.

Returning over the Westlink Bridge and heading up the ramp to eventually head west, the absence of early and adequate mention of ‘Palmerston’ and ‘Chapelizod’ on the sliproad signs must create difficulties for visiting motorists. Traffic in the right hand lane conceals the signage as currently positioned. Some signs need to be replicated on the left verge.

We proceeded towards Lucan and to the dualway along by the Hermitage Golf Club and the Foxhunter Inn. Here, for some unknown reason, vehicles are permitted to make hazardous cross-traffic movements alarmingly in conflict with commonsense (below).

Returning to our dispersal point we mused about our observations. The continuing and extraordinary growth in traffic is overloading many intersections during the commuter phases of traffic movements. This same growth is highlighting road/traffic design problems in a number of locations. And on this perambulation, we only touched some of the outskirts of the metropolis. We have much more to do, and not just in Dublin.

Pity the confused and so valuable tourists. Pity the rest of us too, because we’re not all from the areas we find ourselves driving in. At least the tourists can think the situation ‘quaint’. We have to live with it.