Some of you may have read my tale of woe last week, of being antagonised so much by a motorist with a mobile phone stuck to his head that I ran screaming foul to the gardaí. It was something of a slight exaggeration. Not the bit about Golfboy and his phone, but the bit about me whining to the local constabulary, Kilian Doyle
For, much as I admire our fine police force for much of what they do, I simply don't believe there is a willingness to arrest people for such misdemeanours as nattering inanely on the phone while negotiating rush hour traffic.
I'm not alone in my resignation. Remember the Garda Traffic hotline set up a few years ago for people to snitch on other motorists? Well, there are suggestions now that the powers that be are considering consigning it to the same bin where all the other good ideas that were crushed by public indifference went, to fester and rot.
Apparently, the initial rush of calls to the hotline from the sanctimonious and self-righteous - and no, I wasn't one of them, proud though I am to fall into that category - has petered out into a thin trickle of cranks. It's hardly surprising. Think about it - you see some idiot in a chipped Nissan Micra overtaking eight cars on a blind bend on a hill at 130km/h in a 50km/h zone - what do you do? Call the gardaí? What are the chances of them catching him? I drove 450 miles from Dublin to west Clare and back again last weekend, and saw how many gardaí? Guess, go on, I dare you. Give up? The answer is: one. In 11 hours of driving. And he was going in for his dinner.
You've more chance of seeing Mahatma Ghandi chewing the leg off a horse in a Kildare field than you have of getting Micra-man busted. And even if they did find the guy, it's your word against his.
I read recently of a chap in Indiana who was so frustrated with people speeding through his neighbourhood he started videotaping offenders from his house to show the local police officers. Imagine doing that in Ireland?
If you think speed cameras are a deterrent, think again. For a start, there are still only three working at any time in Ireland, despite the kerfuffle kicked up when it first emerged a few years ago that most of the grey boxes by the side of the road are as empty as a politician's promises.
It gets worse. Those three solitary cameras can only take a certain amount of photos before the already overstretched gardaí have to have new film put in.
There's a pretty good chance the light flashing in your rearview mirror as you tear past is doing nothing more than letting you know you've just got away with speeding.
When I'm Emperor Of The Universe, my car will be fitted with surface-to-surface missiles, dispensing summary justice on the spot. Until then, I'll just have to make do with seething silently.