I have written often enough about traffic, about our politically frivolous, institutionally inert, morally indolent attitude to the carnage on our roads, and also referred often enough to the cause of so much carnage - the young male driver - to fully deserve the condign punishment visited on me recently. Returning from the west one Sunday evening, we were halting at one of the predictable bottlenecks when our car was hit from behind. We were violently propelled into the car in front; and that car was itself then, by whatever peculiar laws of physics command the behaviour of moving objects hitting stationary ones - snooker players understand the process rather well - sent sideways, blocking the path of oncoming cars. By the divine providence which superintends these matters, there were at that precise moment no cars coming from the other direction. Otherwise there would have been bloody massacre.
Escaped injury
As it was, there was mayhem on the road. The car I was travelling in - a BMW - was a write-off. The car in front, which was densely populated with passengers, was badly damaged, but its inmates seem to have escaped injury, though they might have interesting dreams about sitting peacefully in a car in a traffic jam at one moment, and being expelled from the jam into the path of oncoming traffic the next. The car behind received less serious damage than one might have expected, especially as so much damage had been done to its two victim-vehicles. Its front was completely wrecked; but it could manage to creep away after the necessary investigation - if that is the word for the laughable procedures which followed - had been completed.
It had left 30-yard skidmarks before impact. Now at this stage, we may as well ask about the offending driver. Was it Prudence Sidewhistle, concluding a frantic afternoon at the knitting needles with a visit to the local church for evensong? Was it Sister Concepta Freebody on her way to a Revival Prayer Meeting Because Jesus Loves Us? Was it 55-year-old insurance salesman Augustus Peahen on his home way after watching a GAA match? Or was it some a young male in his mid-twenties with a young woman sitting beside him?
Step forward young male: the young gentleman who drove into the back of our car and nearly caused a massacre; the young gentleman who was driving so fast on a congested country road on a Sunday evening that even after a thirtyyard emergency braking he could write one car off and cause a multiple-car collision; the fine young fellow who did not even express regret or apology at what he had done to us.
Delicate design
Ah yes, what had he done to us? Well, my friend who was driving is constructed on the lines of an ox which had gone in for weight-training since it was a mere slip of a calf, and is so strong that he has been commissioned into FCA as its only tank. He seemed relatively unhurt. Me, I am built to a more delicate design: porcelain comes to mind. The initial impact had hurled my head against the headrest; the poor bonce had then been thrown forward, then back again. Our car had then hit the car in front, propelling my head forward; we were then hit again by the car from behind, by which time my poor neck felt like a fishing rod on the end of which was an angry great white shark making its opinions felt in no uncertain terms.
As a result, I have severe pains in my spine and neck, reduced feeling and power in my arms, numbness, tingling and weakness in my fingers. My young friend might well have altered the rest of my life, and very much for the worse.
A single garda duly arrived, took statements from the three drivers, looked at me, asked me whether or not I wanted an ambulance, and then, having seen a corpseless countryside, without any blood to be seen, declared the car which had hit us was the culprit, but also announced he would not be prosecuting anybody. Now this is good. It is by no skill of the young driver who hit us that there was no major slaughter; yet he was allowed to leave the scene of the accident with the certainty that no court case would follow.
So is it Garda policy that prosecution in such circumstances depends on the body count? If the gods smile, and no innocents are butchered by testosteronic idiocy, the owner of the testosterone is allowed to take his testosterone out on the roads again, to practise his vehicular lunacies upon other unfortunate road-users; but if the gods frown, and innocent and blameless blood is shed, then prosecution follows? Is that it? Law-enforcement by lottery?
If you removed young male drivers from our roads, our death toll would be cut by probably 90 per cent. That much is obvious. So is it unjust to ensure that just as the blind, the mad, the retarded, the old are either restricted in their rights to drive, or banned completely, young males might expect comparable limitations? Testosterone is endocrinal plutonium: is it wrong to expect those who are most subject to its homicidal impulses should be subject to rigorous controls? Is it wrong to insist that males under be limited in the speeds they can drive at?
Proper signposts
Wrong or right is barely relevant. We cannot manage to have a single-measurement system for speeds and distances on our roads. We cannot erect proper signposts. We cannot even remove the temporary 40 m.p.h. signs erected during the widening of the Naas dual carriageway, even though the roadworks have been completed for over a year. And most magnificently of all, a couple of years ago the general speed limit, applicable to country lane and to dual carriageway alike, was raised to 60 m.p.h. A magic wand was waved over the mad the bad, and they were urged: go faster.
The Ansbacher affair, and all the other matters preoccupying Dail Committee, tribunal and Jersey courtrooms are undoubtedly scandalous. They deserve to be investigated thoroughly; but these thefts of our public money are in real terms a moral zero in comparison with our tolerance of murder - and murder it is - on our roads. We know it happens; and we with studied deliberation ignore it. And for that, we truly deserve to be damned.