Young drivers not worst road danger
Monday March 17 2008
I had a strange night on the roads during the weekend of our latest road safety "blitz".
I was travelling from Thurles to Dublin on the N7.
I firstly had a young fella in a van driving with his lights full on behind me. Okay, no surprise there. Having pulled over to let him pass me, I continued on towards Dublin.
Soon enough, the modified Honda Integra Type -- R's with blue headlights loomed large in my rearview mirror.
"Great", I thought, "Here we go". Bloody youths with their done-up cars.
The first one overtook responsibly, indicated perfectly and didn't "cut in" in front of me. Amazing! Okay, I thought, this was a freak exception.
The same thing happened twice after that -- both modified Hondas -- and this left me somewhat unsettled.
Aren't these young "hooligans" supposed to be the bane of all things bad, short of inventing AIDS and famine?
The rest of the time, I had to contend with perfectly "respectable" folk driving perfectly "respectable" cars tailgating for kilometres before overtaking at the worst possible places.
I got to the Red Cow and drove around in circles for a while (otherwise known as "going southbound"). On my third attempt to go south, I pulled out at a green light and almost got hit by a middle-aged man driving a new Peugeot saloon, who had jumped a traffic light that was long gone red.
He then began to wobble into my lane. I beeped. He did it again -- completely, oblivious, obviously drunk.
This was after I had overtaken a man who was driving a Suzuki SUV and was confused about where he was going. His response was to keep jamming on the brakes and eventually stopping (he decided to indicate after he was stopped for a few seconds).
It would seem that the moral of the story is at odds with a situation where we drive the fear of God into these "youngsters", while middle-aged men get drunk over an evening meal and vegetate behind the wheel going home.
That is a generalisation of course, but my point is this; old boys kill too, but there was no sign of the garda crackdown where they were most likely to be caught. Why?
Because they might not get the "right" people?
Anthony Halpin, Bray, Co Wicklow
- Bray, Co Wicklow
