Danger – road ahead
Grandad April 6th, 2011
It was quite nippy last winter.
We had record low temperatures, a lot of snow and a shed-load of burst water mains. Because of this, our roads are not what you might call pristine. In fact a lot of roads were pretty badly damaged.
Now some fucking idiot is demanding that the gubmint spend millions on the roads, as they [the roads, not the gubmint, though maybe…..] aren’t safe. Here we go with the same old distorted logic – people spending fortunes that we don’t have on non-essential items, and using safety as an excuse.
I have been around the block a few time, and in all my years I have never been attacked by a road. I have never heard of anyone being mugged, raped or murdered by a road. On the whole I find them to be fairly placid benign yokes.
A road is nothing more than an inanimate slab of concrete or asphalt. It just lies there doing nothing. It is harmless. It cannot be dangerous no matter how hard it tries. It might be a long wide straight stretch, or it might be narrow and full of twisty turns. That doesn’t matter as it is still as safe as a baby’s cradle.
What our fucking idiot fails to understand is that a road cannot be unsafe. What is dangerous is the driver who uses that road. Accidents are caused by people driving too fast for the road conditions. If there are potholes in a road, then for fuck’s sake slow down. It’s as simple as that.
I spent a few holidays in a house in Connemara. It was a beautiful peaceful spot with glorious views out over the Atlantic. To get to that house, you had to drive a half mile down a track that had long grass growing up the middle. After the half mile, you came to a gap in the wall and this marked the beginning of the last half mile. That last half mile was literally a case of driving across the fields. There was no road, or even a track. You drove over grass or bare rock. It was hell on the car’s suspension, but what the hell – the trip was worth it. My point is that half mile was not dangerous. It was rough on the car, but that was up to the driver to select the best route between the rocks. If I had tried doing fifty [or even ten] on that stretch, I probably would have injured myself or someone, but I was sensible enough to drive at a reasonable speed.
So forget all this utter shite about dangerous roads.
Worry about the dangerous drivers.
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