OK, I thought, time to stop the moaning. Time to step up to the plate here.
Minutes earlier, a large car had screamed up behind me, swerved around my vehicle ahead of a very dangerous bend, crossing a continuous white line and spending what to me was a horrifying number of seconds on the wrong side of the road - and on that bend - before screeching off again, like a bat out of hell.
Like so many others, I’m shaken by how, in the space of just a week - and it was last week to be precise - six people had died in separate car accidents.
At the time of writing, the number of road fatalities in this country was up to 34, an increase of two in the same time period last year.
Everyone’s talking about the unbelievable traffic carnage on our roads which has escalated to terrifying levels in the last few years.
Everyone’s blaming some or all of the following factors; speeding, carelessness, aggression, stupidity, an overwhelming sense of entitlement linked to a refusal to recognise the rules of the road or, indeed, give way to others, drink and drugs, the glaring lack of garda presence and enforcement of road traffic regulations, and of course, the politicians, who might be great at turning up at the funerals of those killed, but are making a dog’s dinner of doing anything effective about resourcing gardaí to get out there and enforce the basic rules of the road.
It’s a given that Irish roads are screaming for way more traffic patrols, way more speed traps, way more road-blocks - and speed-bumps in every town and village.
Perhaps us civilians could stop the hand-wringing and step up to the plate ourselves. Because the chances are, if they’re actually informed about something like this in time, the gardaí will act.
Back to me and the lunatic in the speeding car.
I don’t have dash-cam so I hadn’t a hope of clocking the registration of Mister or Missus Bat-Out-of-Hell that day as the car flew past and zoomed away out of sight. I was so stunned by the driver’s race-track shenanigans that I didn’t even manage to identify his or her gender. But I did manage to take in the colour and the fairly recognisable make of the vehicle.
As divine luck and karma would have it, in the next village our speedster got stuck in a bit of a tailback behind a number of other motorists who were all, thank God, obeying the speed limit.
And I caught up. In fact, I came right up behind that mad machine. Close enough to see the registration. Which I carefully memorised.
I watched as, once barely on the outskirts of the village, our pal revved up and tore off again down the road, again absolutely massacring the speed limits.
I pulled in. I rang the gardaí. I explained what had happened and informed them of the direction the car had taken.
I expressed my shock at the driver’s behaviour and explained that I’d been motivated to ring them by the recent cascade of horrific deaths on the roads.
I was asked if I wished to make a complaint. I said no, I just wanted to alert them to the presence of a motorist whom I feared posed a serious risk to other road-users.
That was that. I went on.
But the gardaí rang me back some time later. A patrol car had identified, approached and stopped the car, which was by then proceeding through a local town some distance away. Gardai had cautioned the driver. Fair dues.
Maybe, I thought, just maybe, that formal warning from the gardaí and the knowledge that the driver had been complained about by another motorist might - even for a while - make him or her think twice about all the speeding and crazy behaviour.
Maybe down the line the warning might even save someone’s life.
And here’s the thing. Everyone has a mobile phone now. Many people have dash-cams. If those of us who are genuinely upset by the carnage on our roads made a conscious effort to report the truly scary shenanigans that happen in traffic every day in front of us, maybe we could start to turn the tide.
We could possibly save a life.
Many lives could potentially be saved if hundreds or even thousands of us knuckled down and made that effort to phone in bad driver behaviour.
At the end of the day, the government may bring down the speed limits across the road network - though, of course, many drivers will continue to ignore those limits unless there are speed cameras and about 10 times as many gardaí out on the roads to enforce them.
It can roll out mandatory roadside drug testing, speed cameras, and a tougher penalty points system. It can do lots of things.
But while we’re waiting for the government to take its hands out of its pockets, maybe the rest of us - the horrified bystanders and members of communities devastated by the fallout of this completely unnecessary road carnage - could do our bit to stop it.
Let’s give over the talk about how horrified and shocked and helpless we are, in favour of using our mobiles to bring the behaviour of aggressive, unsafe drivers to the notice of the gardaí after they’ve run a red light, harassed us to drive above the speed limit, or crossed a continuous white line on a bend.
Just a thought.
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