"Handing out licences at £12 each to young people, some of whom may be as young as 16 years old, against the background levels of alcohol consumption, is as irresponsible as handing a loaded shotgun to a child," said Dr David Lillis, a consultant paediatrician at University College Hospital, last month. It is a fair measure of our political culture that Fianna Fail effectively promised before coming into office to give more toddlers pump-actions with their claim that they would get more young people on to the road at lower insurance costs. The new social contract: homicide as election promise.
It was not called that. It was in fact called an academy - to be paid for by the rest of us - which would enable more young drivers get onto the road at lower insurance levels. Did Fianna Fail really think that it was merely lack of training which was - and is - the main reason why so many young drivers drive at ludicrous speeds? Was it not altogether more likely that they did not and do not fear the consequences if they break the law? They knew that the wrath of the State, and the wrath of us as a civilised people, would not fall on them if they drove at criminal speed.
Serial slaughter
Instead, the two Government Departments responsible for tackling the serial slaughter on the roads, Justice and the Environment, seem to be as capable of action as baby rabbits under the unflinching eye of weasels. Naturally, anybody would welcome the Taoiseach's initiative on this matter; but even now, as we get our monthly Omagh on the roads, the fines for speeding are pathetically low - the on-the-spot ticket from a garda is only £50, and in today's terms, that is derisory money.
The great sin of our age, as dark a blot on our civilisation as child chimney-sweeps or slavery were in other ages, is needless death on the road. Our tolerance of this disgraces our democracy, for it is functionally wicked and morally indefensible; yet still we fail to treat it with the terrible and certain severity it deserves. For the relatively trivial offence of consuming drugs, as an adult who will hurt nobody else, involve nobody else, and threaten nobody else, we have an entire battery of laws almost beyond the writ of habeas corpus; but for the heinous offence, the truly diabolical sin, of driving dangerously, and putting at risk the lives of blameless young parents and innocent children, we have weak and pusillanimous laws which nobody genuinely fears.
Why is there not a terrible taboo on driving dangerously? Why is it that, say, public nudity is regarded as so much more reprehensible and a source of family embarrassment? Why are dangerous drivers not immediately arrested and thrown into clink as the drunk and disorderly are? Why do fathers lend their sons their fast cars? Why are there not powers of automatic on-the-spot confiscation of cars as there are powers of confiscation of the property of those trading in drugs? Why are unlighted bicycles at night not the subject of immediate and irreversible confiscation?
Of all the drugs available on the market, the most dangerous of all is the motor car. Because not merely is it an addictive drug in itself, but it recruits and animates other mood- and behaviour-changing drugs which already exist in the human body, especially the young male body: adrenalin and testosterone, the two lethal companions in the bloodstream when you are behind the wheel of a car.
Speed limit
And far from treating these potentially lethal drug-abusers with an unwaveringly heavy hand, we actually abet them in their delinquency. Most of the roads where I live in Kildare are tiny boreens, unsuited for any speed above 30 miles an hour; yet, on leaving every village in the area, motorists are assured by the black-bar road sign that the general speed limit of 55 m.p.h. applies.
I have seen people drive at the general speed limit; and on those bends, they cannot but be on the wrong side of the road. I have on at least five occasions been forced off the road by oncoming vehicles which are no doubt within the speed limit and which, once they got back to their own side of the road, were within the law, even though they were being driven at a speed which could not possibly be safe.
We have the calamitous road accidents we have not merely because our drivers are among the worst in Europe; not merely because we have an imbecilic system which allows anyone to set themselves up as a driving instructor; not merely because we allow people to pass their tests with minimal qualifications, no written test, no night-driving, no motorway driving, no skid-tests, and no emergencies to tackle; not merely because we let callow youths who have passed this perfunctory test drive as fast as the rest of us; but because the entire driving infrastructure is almost designed to cause accidents.
Road signs
Our road signs are appalling. As I have pointed out countless times, they measure distances in two systems, imperial and metric. If you are to depend on road signs to get to where you want to go, you will certainly get lost: a sign for Tallaght at one crossroads will direct you to the next crossroads where there is no sign at all, and while you are hesitating and hunting for directions, you are a danger to yourself and to others.
And sometimes the county council itself must be held directly accountable for accidents. There is a 180-degree hairpin bend on the back road between Kill and Saggart alongside the Naas dual carriageway; and that is dangerous enough. But sticking out of the top of the hairpin is another road, which drivers coming in each direction think is a continuation of the road they are on. Cars therefore cross over at speed, directly into the path of cars which remain on the true road, and there are accidents there almost daily.
A lady who lives at the junction told me she reported the junction to Kildare County Council repeatedly last year. There was no response - no halt signs, no danger signs, just a tiny sharp-bend sign obscured by foliage. Somebody will die on that bend soon; and nobody will care. That is the land we live in.