The roads in and out of this town are a danger to all who venture forth. Every day, it seems, there are reports of serious crashes and injuries, and even deaths.

It's a combination of too many people, driving too fast, on roads not designed for this amount of usage. The main roads in and out of Tauranga are sadly outdated and very 20^th century.

Roads are the essential means of anything and everything we do and the sad fact is that some of them are currently not safe.

We can all slow down and everything will be fine, right? No. Today's world is getting faster and faster and we need the infrastructure to cope with that.

If we spent all the money raised from the roads to fix up the roads, then we'd be okay. Sure, there would be a lot of road works, but at least we'd be getting what we've already paid for.

But we don't. Still large swathes of road-generated taxes go to the great ‘consolidated fund.' That means that your road taxes go to support other government things, like welfare, or donations to the Pacific Islands for instance.

Let's fix the roads first eh?

G Martin, Brookfield (Abridged).