On June 21, I was travelling on the motorway from Lahore to Islamabad. I normally always take the motorway to avoid animals, tractors and other menaces on the GT road. In the afternoon, when I was around 15 km from the Islamabad exit, I saw a full-sized cow jumping over the divider from the opposite side of the road to my side, about 50 meters ahead of me. Had I been going at the speed limit i.e. 120 km/h, it would have surely resulted in disaster. Luckily, at that time I had curtailed my speed to 100 km/hr and barely managed to avoid the cow with some difficulty. A motorway police officer in a SUV was cruising nearby and observed the incident. The same thing happened again on July 15 when I was northbound 3 km short of Chakri. This time, too, the motorway police was trying to get the cow off the road. I have come across dogs on the motorway a number of times while stray villagers crossing the motorway are a landmark unique to our country. The presence of cows, though, is indeed menacing and speaks volumes for the safety standards being maintained by the NHA. It is worth mentioning here that I have traveled on the highways of numerous countries without ever observing anything larger than a squirrel or a small turtle crossing the road and that too with ample warning signs for the motorists. -PIR SHABBIR AHMAD, Islamabad, via e-mail, July 16.