You see WE are all ‘good’ drivers and most of us are ‘safe’ drivers, and some of us are even ‘expert’ drivers no less. That is why each year there are still nearly two thousand fatalities and a couple of hundred  thousand injured (over twenty thousand seriously) on the roads of Britain then? Puzzling really though, don’t you think?

Road travel, despite many modern advances & regulations, remains the greatest regular risk factor in most of our lives.

Accidents on our roads happen for a multitude of reasons of course. Unexpected weather like ice & freezing fog, road collapse due to mining subsidence, gale force winds capsizing high lorries and felling trees, torrential rain causing visibility blackout and aquaplaning cars, wild & domestic animals running into the carriageway to lose their lives and write -off a vehicle, mechanical failure due to faulty bits otherwise lack of maintenance or neglect; perhaps one of those reasons is the cause?

Or possibly more likely human error, would you say? One person makes a mistake? Another person can’t accommodate that mistake? Accident?

Obviously we also get the criminals, the drunken drivers, the boy-racers, the incapacitated, the aggressive morons, the incompetent individuals, and the like. Most injury accidents however happen in our speed restricted streets and the least on our motorways (because they accommodate crashes easier), which most of us don’t realise (so people are most at danger nearest home?).

Anyone of us who have witnessed a road fatality will tell you that it is humbling, and something that lives on with you forever. How the emergency services cope is a mystery, surely? Anyone of us who have been involved in a serious motorway accident, like in a spinning car, will tell you how easy it is to lose your life? Any driver who has felt their tyres lose traction, or driven in dangerous conditions with juggernauts thundering past seemingly oblivious to the risks, will know what it is like to arrive home safe with knocking knees?

If you drive on minor or even major roads, you sometimes get into traffic jams caused simply by congestion, meaning volume of traffic. But why does that occur when there is no obvious reason? It is because people travel too close to the vehicle in front, and when somebody slows at the front of the traffic for whatever reason, all the rest shuffle together and have to reduce speed, drive even closer, and then it all becomes a crawl (or stops altogether).

If you drive on a motorway, your heart is regularly in your mouth to watch the cars in the outside lane travelling at seventy, eighty, and ninety with bumpers unbelievable close, all stupidly relying on the column not to suddenly brake or slow. Needlessly, taking their lives, their passengers futures (including often their children) and all others’, in their hands. Possibly you have even been behind one of these idiots, when their brake lights suddenly come on, but then with tyres squealing who smash into the back of the car in front – and another couple of cars at least hit the dust, and the road is closed, littered with debris if not bodies? [it doesn’t seem to matter if the Highway Agency put down warning chevron distance markers on the road, because they don’t apply to experienced imbecile drivers (particularly speeding ones in top of the range cars), do they? This ‘up yr bum’ driving is also prevalent on roads in non-built-up places and while speeds might be less the consequences are still the same if not worse – death & injury.

[One day when driving YOU will make a mistake (guaranteed) and when that time comes, just hope that the other driver can accommodate it. When YOU drive, some other driver will make a mistake (guaranteed) – will you be able to accommodate them, ask yourself?].