Symptoms and causes

[Martin Cassini]

Pondering human agency in war and disaster, Neal Ascherson (Observer 20 March), quotes a freelance engineer he met in Uganda whose (unspecified but sage) advice about road-building was largely ignored. "As an engineer, I can tell you the root of all human mistakes. It’s people putting things right, before they have finished finding out what’s wrong." Could he have been referring to interventionist traffic management, which sinks tens of billions a year into "solving" self-inflicted symptoms while failing to treat the underlying cause of our problems on the road?