EMISSIONS:Drink-driving and speeding detections are up, and that is because gardaí are tracking us more closely, writes KILIAN DOYLE
‘THERE WAS of course no way of knowing if you were being watched at any given moment . . . It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. You had to live in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and every movement scrutinised.”
Thus wrote a remarkably prescient George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty Four, the 60th anniversary edition of which is out now.
I say prescient because in these days of random breathalyser tests, when sneaky cops in unmarked vehicles track our every move and CCTV cameras ogle us as we sneak through tolls, he could have been talking about the lot of the Irish motorist.
Gone are the heady days of utter lawlessness on our roads. Big Brother is officially watching us. We know this because he makes no attempt to hide it. Indeed, he regularly boasts of his successes in spotting motorists up to mischief, presumably with the intention of putting the rest of us in fear for our lives. That’s how Big Brother works.
The Garda recently announced that speed detections were up by a whopping 40 per cent in the first five months of 2009, over the same period last year. Drink- and drug-driving busts are through the roof. This is not because we motorists are behaving any worse than normal, but because they are getting better at catching us. Mobile speed cameras, number-plate recognition machines and drug-testing devices are their new tools of oppression and they’re determined to use them.
A cynic may ask: “What proof do we have that detections are actually up, apart from the word of gardaí? Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that they might tweak the stats a tad to make themselves look good and justify their budgets? Has nobody heard of the Morris Tribunal?”
Our cynical friend need not trouble his pretty little tinfoil-hatted head with such madcap conspiracy theories. The fact is they don’t need to fiddle the numbers an iota. We make their jobs too easy.
For example, show me someone who’s never, ever knowingly broken a speed limit and I’ll show you someone who’s never driven a car.
Strip the average Irish motorist and you’ll see a lawless streak as wide as China down the middle of their back. From bumfluffed teenagers to gin-sozzled dowagers, we are a nation at war with the rules, merrily thumbing our noses at authority. Which is hardly surprising, when one considers how those two supposed pillars of society – State and Church – have failed us so spectacularly over the decades.
This rebellious attitude goes some way to explaining why many claim that speed traps have nothing to do with safety and everything to do with generating revenue. It also explains those others who are up in arms about a proposed cut in the drink-driving limit, arguing that is an unjustified attack on freedom, a denial of our basic human right to glug a few light ales before pottering home in our cars, consequences bedamned.
They are wrong. Big Brother is only saving us from ourselves.
If things have come to resemble the Orwellian nightmare of a totalitarian dictatorship, it’s only because we’ve collectively brought it upon our own heads. If we didn’t behave like naughty children, we wouldn’t be treated like naughty children.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a maxillofacial surgeon who does house calls. My tongue is wedged so firmly in my cheek I’m beginning to worry it’ll pop clean through.
It may be a reaction to living in constant terror of getting busted for some minor motoring misdemeanour and made an example of. Or it may well be down to something else entirely. Who knows?
But one thing of which I am sure is that Big Brother is definitely watching us. As the old adage goes, just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.