The debris from a car accident where - luckily - 7 people escaped with their lives. Image credit: TV3/The Irish Times
As an Irishman, it’s pretty much a rare occasion when you go a week without hearing of an accident on our country’s roads. Many of which involve people under the age of 25, with the majority of that sector again being under the age of 20. What is it with teenagers and going too fast and too dangerous on roads? Do they have a death wish of sorts?
Kevin Myers from the Irish Independent published a fantastic piece about this in last Thursday’s Irish Independent (you can read it online in its entirety here), claiming that if speeding on the road wasn’t made out to be as glamorous as it’s made out to be, and their deaths and funerals weren’t highly publicised (at least at national level in the media), perhaps they’d think twice about doing it. And I have to say, he’s bang-on.
The above intro picture is from a car accident last Monday morning (30th August, 2010) in Foxford, Co. Mayo. 7 people were in that Opel Astra (yes, hard to believe we can still tell what it is by looking at the wreckage). Seven people. In a five-seater car. Where’s the common sense here? It happened at 4:45am in the morning on the way back from a party. Where undoubtedly, the driver could have taken the safe option and done two car runs safely instead of one and nearly wiping out everyone. Last month, in my own Co. Donegal, 8 died in an accident in Inishowen, with 7 of those being crammed into a Volkswagen Passat. Seriously? 7 in a Passat? They were just asking for it.
You know, I usually would have felt a certain degree of sympathy for car accident victims. But these days, it seems that they are just out looking for the accidents, instead of looking to avoid them. 7 in a 5 seater car is not only adding extra weight which could be dangerous to the car, lowering it, and possibly forcing the tyres to scrape the wheel arches, which could cause a puncture and again, an eventual accident. As well as that, with all those people crammed in, trying to see out the rear view mirror amidst a mess of bodies akimbo in the back seat must be a nightmare. So yeah, I have no sympathy for these folk at all. And I implore them to continue their ways.
Yes. keep on causing awful pain and suffering to yourself (if you survive), those around you, their families, and whole communities. Keep on pushing up our insurance premiums and proving that people our age aren’t fit and responsible enough to drive. Maybe if the insurance and tax was a bit more expensive maybe these fools wouldn’t be able to afford to get and keep a car on the road. You never see me complaining that something’s too cheap, but in this I’ll take an exception. Let natural selection weed out the deadwood and untrustworthy drivers from our roads. If they haven’t the common sense to be responsible about having the health and safety of others in their trust, then they don’t deserve to be given a chance at life. Even if they did survive, what’d become of them? Life in jail for mass vehicular manslaughter? In fact, that’d be a worse fate, because then you have to live with the guilt and shame on your conscience, and that’s a far worse test of character than just giving up and dying.
Harsh words, but damn it if they’re not necessary. Drivers and passengers both should be subject to this. If you’re stupid enough to ride in an overcrowded car to begin with, you don’t deserve the sympathy if you end up in hospital when saying “no” was a much easier and safer alternative.
I’m not going to win any fans by saying any of this. But it needs to be said by someone of my own age, and hopefully someone will see that it’s not just the older folk ragging on about “kids these days” and just hating young people for being young and foolish.
