Selfish drivers get my goat!

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And by selfish drivers I mean all those who drive too fast for the conditions, drive too close together, don’t pay enough attention, behave aggressively, and also don’t bother to check their vehicles (tyres, brakes, oil etc.) enough or at all. These days this seems to include just about everybody! It is so true that familiarity breeds contempt. If a person is doing their very first parachute jump, for example, you can bet they will run over their training in their head again and again, check all the safety features, make sure the conditions are just right, check their equipment, make sure they don’t get tangled with anyone else – but if they get in a car every morning it is so ordinary that they do none of these things, even though it is more dangerous to them and other people. This morning there have been several accidents on the main roads around here, but in my opinion most of those were probably not genuine ’accidents’ at all but were more than likely avoidable if the drivers had been paying proper attention to the conditions. Walking Little One to school we could hardly get out of our entrance due to the constant stream of cars coming up the narrow lane, as there is no room for a pedestrian to pass, and they were all trying to cut through to escape the nose-to-tail queue of traffic on the village road, and that was caused by people trying to avoid the jams on the main roads. Now if selfish people drive badly and get themselves injured or killed, that’s just too bad. Of course it’s a shame for the families, especially if they have children. But bad drivers risk not only their own lives but obviously those of others too. But what I’m really talking about today is not just the obvious impact of injuries to other innocent road-users, but all the other knock-on effects. The endless tailbacks, the blocked roads, the hours of delays experienced by hundreds of people, the missed appointments, the delayed emergency vehicles, the hours spent working late to make up lost time, the rearrangements to childcare when parents can’t get to school pick-up in time, the tired and hungry children stuck for several hours in the middle of the night, the huge spike in air pollution caused by all those vehicles inching along at walking pace – yes even the impact on global warming of all those unnecessarily extended journeys! All of this can be caused just because one person wanted to get to their destination a bit faster. Maybe one day this sort of behaviour will be as socially unacceptable as drink-driving has now become. Or maybe self-driving cars will simply force their ‘drivers’ to stay within certain limits. All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2018.