Over the last few weeks a lot of media attention has been focussed on the “current” problems with Irish roads and in particular the high incidence of deaths.
Damien Blake’s post has given me the extra “push” to post this…
As some of you know I recently got a car – I didn’t really need one when I was living in the centre of Milan and hadn’t got round to getting one when I came back to Ireland.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been to Cork a few times as well as to Ennis. I’m not sure what my mileage is to date, but I probably do about 300 miles each weekend (my car uses Imperial – sorry!).
I’d almost forgotten how bad some drivers are. Speed isn’t the issue – stupidity and impatience is.
Stupidity – not indicating is my main bug bear.
Cars randomly stop and turn with zero warning. It doesn’t matter whether you are on a main road or a small country dirt track. You can never be sure what other drivers are thinking (in a lot of cases I doubt if they are thinking at all, but that’s another matter).
You’d think that indicators were a new invention!!
Impatience – It’s related to the stupidity in a lot of cases I suppose.
Typical scenario is where drivers simply cannot bear to wait in a queue and simply have to jump it. Of course the fact that jumping it means that they come straight out into a lane of traffic going the other direction doesn’t seem to matter to them. And how much time will they actually save? 30 seconds? A minute? Is it really worth getting killed for a 30 second “gain”?
What can be done?
The gardai need to be more proactive about dangerous driving. And by dangerous driving I mean literally that. Not the “wonderful” speed issue.
It’s far too easy for them to lay the blame entirely on speed.
If you are going down the M8 at 150 km/h you may be breaking the law, but you are less likely to hit anyone or cause an accident than the idiots who park on double yellow lines and obstruct other driver’s view, or the other idiots who stop randomly etc.,
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