A few weeks ago I was driving back from Cork with a friend and the discussion fell, as so often it does these days, on to road safety and what they would do about cutting down the hideous number of accidents, writes Martyn Turner.
I went first and told my tale.
"One day," I said, "against our better judgment, we found ourselves in Florida again, swamp 'n' concreteland. You can't pick where your friends choose to live. But, what the hell, it was sunny and warm and not too muggy if you kept close to the water.
"We had heard that the Florida Keys were nicer than the rest of the place so, braving 40-mile-an-hour winds (storm warning) we headed there on Highway One, part of that fantastic network of motorways that criss-cross the USA.
Florida boreen
"And then we discovered the only bit of the interstate highway network that wasn't dual carriageway but a simple, common or garden cars-going-up-and-down-in-opposite-directions-on
-the-same-piece-of-tarmac single lane, just like we have all over Ireland, boreen. The Florida Keys are so narrow and slight that a dual carriageway would just do away with the place altogether, or would have done then (it was 20 years ago). Maybe Jeb Bush has made it three lanes in each direction by now."
But I digressed, as usual. What I went on to say was that we saw this ridiculous sign dominating the entrance to this single carriageway road. It stood there proud, in the blistering, eye squinting sun and said something like:
CARRIAGEWAY.
DO NOT PASS.
HEADLIGHTS ON
DAY AND NIGHT.
Being America it probably added: "Penalty $500 or a good shooting".
We sniggered, in our supercilious European way, at the Americans putting their headlights on in the blinding sun. Who ever heard of anything so daft.
Another example of their profligate energy waste. And we drove on down the empty road.
"What's that?" Herself said peering into the far, far, distance.
"Looks like a star out of the East," I said. "Keep your eyes peeled for a manger and a saviour."
It got closer.
It was a car doing the standard American 55 m.p.h. (they are very good that way).
"Incredible," we said, withdrawing our previous supercilious sniggers. "Who would have thought lights would show up so fantastically well in sunshine?"
We went home, eventually.
A few months later the phone rang and it was someone from Telecom or whatever Telecom was called before it became what ever Telecom is now, if you know what I mean. They wanted me to draw some posters to encourage their drivers to drive with the headlights on day and night, all year round.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because", they said, "statistics show that when people drive around with their lights on all the time accidents are reduced by 10-15 per cent, and that includes those Scandinavian countries where half the accidents are caused by a moose".
Well, if it works for mooses (moosi? meese?), not to mention the Mickey Mouses of Florida, it's good enough for me so, ever since, I have driven around the country with my headlights on.
For years I was flashed, in a vehicular sort of way, by oncoming motorists. But, in these wintry days, those without headlights are outnumbered by those with.
The penny seems to have dropped partially, for winter at least. Although in some ways it's more dangerous now because those idiots who don't turn on their lights these miserable wet and grey mornings become almost invisible to everyone else.
"But the question is," I wailed, (I was still lecturing my friend, pay attention) "if Telecom knew about headlights and accidents 15 years ago, and the people who took an initiative in Dublin last month knew about headlights and accidents, why didn't the Government, why didn't the insurance companies?
"How difficult can it be to pass a law calling for headlights day and night? How hard could it be to print an advisory notice on an insurance renewal slip?
"Maybe it would be unconstitutional. Maybe the Ministers for the Environment have been too busy with their penalty points.
"Maybe the extra fuel needed to power the lights will cripple the economy?" I waffled on, as I do, loving the sound of my own voice, and we got to Abbeyleix and, being locals, we turned off to avoid the Monasterevin/ Kildare tortoise crawl.
Cats eyes'
"So what would you do?" I asked the driver just as we approached a piece of road between Stradbally and Athy where they have put orange cats' eyes on the side of the road, white cats' eyes down the middle and green cats' eyes before every junction. The whole road was lit up like an airport runway, the first bit of road we had seen clearly since we left Cork.
"I'd do this," he said, taking his hands off the wheel and gesturing to the runway cats' eyes,"everywhere".