Bubastis Laments his Nations Nonchalent Attitude to the Slaughter of its Populace

The BBQ Pit
1

We have a new fad here in Ireland, a new game, one that we are becoming quite skilled at. It’s called “Killing People with Cars”. Here’s how you play. Buy a car. Kill people. That’s it.

Every morning, the news tells of another life lost on the road. We are given totals as to how many lives are lost so far. And here’s the thing; we then go out and try to beat that total.

In 2004, 374 lives were lost on our nations roads. We bettered that in 2005, managing to rack up 399 kills. So far in 2006, we have killed 134 people. If we keep up this average, by the end of the year, we will have killed over 400 people. Not bad going.

Ok, everybody admits that maybe this game is getting a bit old, and that maybe we should, y’know, stop the massacre and such. Everyone. We all think this sucks. And it should stop.

But it isn’t stopping. It’s getting worse.

I can only give you what I believe is the cause. It’s us. The Irish. Everybody was right all along. We are dunces. We are ignorant. We are dumb. We can’t take the fucking hint. We know best.

It won’t happen to us. It might happen elsewhere in the country, but I’ll be alright. I’m a good driver. I’ve only had a few drinks. My car is in good enough nick. Those brakes are alright. He’ll stop; I don’t need to slow down. I’m more than capable of driving at this speed. I can handle it. I’m alright.
Ill be alright.

I can only imagine how much everyone else is laughing at us, the thick Micks, killing each other night after night. Drunken Paddy crashes his car into an oncoming lorry. What a bollix. That’s the Irish for you. Stupid cunts. Whereas other nations might take the hint, and say, gee, we seem to have a road fatality issue here, let’s address the matter, put a better structure into place, get more traffic cops out there, tighten our belts, and curb this ceaseless slaughter… No. Not us. Vroom Vroom. Watch us go.

I can only begin to speculate, but if I were to blame anything, I would blame the “Celtic Tiger”, an economic boom that occurred a few years back. Suddenly, everyone was rich. Everyone did very well. Everyone had to have a better car that the next guy. He had a BMW, you had a Merc. Young drivers, previously unable to afford a car, could now afford not only a car, but to tune and mod this car, just like in that movie that was both fast and furious. Hey, my car looks like that car in that movie!! I guess I can drive like that guy in that movie!! I’m Irish, and therefore dumb enough to believe this fact! Hey, now I’m dead. And that pretty girl I was tearing round town trying to impress, well, she’s not so pretty anymore. They’ll have to close her casket. And that guy that was driving home to his wife when he met me on the wrong side of the road? Well, let’s just call her a widow.

Oops, I nearly fell into the “It’s the YOUNG people” trap there. No, plenty of slaughter for all ages, folks. The grim road reaper does not discriminate against age, unlike many of us closed-minded Irish, who believe that it’s all the fault of the YOUNG people, driving so fast, so furious. Nope, that old guy who has been driving for sixty years, the Hans Moleman guy, he’s as much to blame. Heck, it’s not his fault; he’s Irish. Of course he’s so fucking stupid that he doesn’t know his reactions have slowed and dulled in his later years. He can drive on WHATEVER SIDE OF THE ROAD HE LIKES. And that lady dropping her kids to school, of course she can talk on her cell phone while taking a roundabout… She’s Irish, she doesn’t know any better. And that guy who works sixty miles from home and has to commute, hey, he doesn’t have to get up a bit earlier to make the drive on time… He can just drive a wee bit FASTER. He’s Irish. He’s invincible, right? Stop giggling in the back there.

Hey, don’t blame our TOTALLY FUCKING INEPT traffic corps; those poor cops are overworked as it is!! They have their holes to pick. Sure, every now and then the Department will issue orders for a “Crackdown”… Don’t worry guys. This just means that you take your patrol car, park somewhere close to a town, say… on the straightest road out of town, just before the speed limit sign. Now, you can nail people one after the other as they build up speed leaving town. On paper, it looks like you guys did a great job! And no messing about at actual accident black spots, in rural areas, or late at night when the dumb Irish are drink-driving. Y’know… No WORK. Just nail people at an easy target area, just so we have something to show people when they think us cops are doing nothing to cease the slaughter on the roads. And the best part is, none of these dumb Irish cunts will ever argue about us, or the government that rules us. They’ll just keep killing each other on the roads. And they’ll all agree that something, SOMETHING must be done, and then do ABSOLUTLEY fucking nothing to correct it.

They are the Irish. They don’t have to do anything. Because it will never happen to them.

My name here is Bubastis; I can only speak of my own experiences.

My parents were at a roundabout last year when a van smashed into their car. My Dad had to be cut out later that night, and spent some time in Hospital, but fully recovered. My Mum was fine.

My cousin was sideswiped at a roundabout 18 months ago. He lived, but will never walk right again.

My Aunt’s sister in law and her daughter were both killed in a head-on collision in which the other driver was also killed a few years back.

One of my neighbours crashed his car drunk a few years back and was killed instantly.

There is a black spot a few miles from my house, 18 people were killed there last year alone.

My girlfriend has just begun to learn how to drive.

Bub

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You are not alone. I invite you to come witness the lunacy that is California driving during the rainy season.

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Thought I’d give you an idea of just how bad it can get. I’m not sure what sort of population discrepancy we’re looking at; just about everyone in California owns a vehicle.

4

Oh hell, we came up with more innovative methods of killing people years ago.

5

if I may kick into a more familiar Bubastis rant, I’d like to take a swipe at the many non-nationals living here in Ireland. After the e.u. opened up, or whatever, Ireland was flooded with non-national workers from eastern europe, Poland, Latvia, Estonia… Generally, no-one has a problem with this. These are just people over in our prosperous country trying to earn a living. Come on in.

But, Christ, if you feel like you need a car, buy one over here. Don’t take you polish reg left hand drive (we drive on the left here, in right hand drive cars) piece of crap with you.

And, Serge, or whatever your name is, the answer is NO. No, it is not a good idea to try and overtake an articulated truck when you are driving a left-hand drive car.

Back me up guys, imagine you are driving your car from the passenger seat… Do you think it would be safe to try and overtake anything? Of course not. 5 polish people died last week in one car because of this. Of course, we have no legislation about non-nationals taking their cars into the country, nor do we seem to have any rules regarding the Insuring of such cars. This is another thing our braindead government is “Getting around to”. Yeah, I’ll tell that to the people that are killed why you’re making up your mind, prick.

6

Not disagreeing with you bubastis.
Aren’t you forgetting the Latvians and Lithuanian who died in Donegal in February?

IMHO the biggest problem with Irish drivers is that there are a significant number of people driving cars who have not passed a test.

In fact, there are a significant number of unlicenced people driving very powerful cars, on very dodgy roads, unsupervised by a qualified driver. Some of these people may have failed their driving tests, and then got back into their cars and driven away.

Between the people who have been on their provisional licences for years while they wait for a test date, and the ones who were granted licences without tests back in the day, there are an awful lot of “drivers” who can’t actually drive properly on Irish roads. And since a lot of people are taught to drive by relatives rather than professionals, the problems is self-perpetuating, with bad drivers teaching others to drive badly.

Of course, it’s not exactly new.

Rather than getting Gaybo in to look stern and tell people to drive better- how about actually ensuring that only people who can actually drive safely are allowed behind the wheel of a car while unsupervised?

That means a complete overhaul of the licence and testing process as it currently stands, and possibly the introduction of Northern Irish type “R” plates (and the associated speed limit and motorway ban) for the first year after passing the test.

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Hmmm… that seems like a lot of work for Bertie and Co. Isn’t it easier for them to just sound off about doing something, rather than actually doing it?

Agree 100%, too many provisional licence drivers on the road. But then, everyone has to start somewhere, right? And with twelve-month waiting lists for driving tests… Most just get their provisional, book a test, then drive for a year, picking up enough bad habits along the way to fail said test. At which pint, I feel, they should be enroled in a mandatory school of motoring, not get their dad to go over the basics with them.

irishgirl, you know as well as I do that everyone is just tensing themselves for the upcoming Bank Holiday weekend. It’s gotten to the stage that its not a case of will anyone be killed, but rather how many will be killed. As I pointed out at the end of my OP, it’s not always “Someone else”.

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As an aside, I simply loved the NRA (National Roads Authority) signs they had posted on the highways when I visited. Apparently, in an attempt to raise the consciousness of Irish drivers described by the OP, they had posted a bunch of roadsigns. My favorite was:

63 dead on Wicklow roads in the last 4 years!

and, underneath that was another, slightly smaller, but still official sign, that said:

Who cares?

I kinda assumed they meant to make sure that people do care about the number of deaths on the roads, but the sign just cracked me up.

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Ah, and here I thought it might have something to do with your freakin’ abnormally narrow roads (one lane does not a highway make) and crazy ass Irish drivers going eleven hundred kilometers an hour 'round blind curves at the edges of cliffs.
(The only driving more scary than Ireland was Bali, where we refused to rent a car and hired a driver. And prayed a lot.)

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Ireland’s per-capita road death rate could be better, but it could also be a lot worse: http://driveandstayalive.com/info%20section/statistics/stats-usa_indiv-states_per-capita_2003.htm#table-2

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WhyNot- you want fast drivers on bad roads? You need the North Western Coast of Northern Ireland. The place that gave us Joey Dunlop.

Every weekend in the summer, there are guys on their motorbikes (fast little Asian ones, not big Harleys) in packs of about 5, going hell for leather on the aforementioned one-lane country roads.

I think another part of the problem is that people get used to the particular stretch of quiet, narrow, twisty, pot holed road they drive on every day, and so they learn to do it at about a billion miles an hour.

90% of the time that’s fine, but Og help them if there’s someone going really slowly just over the brow of the hill, or a tractor backing out of a laneway. They just can’t deal with unexpected situations because they’re going too fast and mentally they’re completely unprepared.

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Phht. The Irish ain’t got nothin’ on Massachusetts.

Go Celtics! Woo!

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People! Cars are DANGEROUS! It’s just inevitable that people will die, every day, on the roads!

People drive more and more every year. More people, more cars, more vehicle miles travelled. It’s more dangerous than taking public transit, or walking, or taking the train, or cycling, or flying, or anything else.

But it’s so convenient, so we will stay in our cars, and we will continue to design our cities and countrysides and infrastructures so that the only way to get around with any practicality is the private automobile.

The only way to ensure fewer people get killed is for everyone to DRIVE LESS. Why can’t we accept this simple solution?

Because it means we’ll have to drive less.

Increased risk of dying or killing people in car crashes is the price we pay for our love of the automobile. We make the choice every time we drive.

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The rate for MA is lower than the rate for Ireland. MA has the lowest rate of fatalities in the USA. (We’re rather high on the number of accidents, but due to the congestion of the states, most accidents do not result in fatalities. Injuries and property damage are, IIRC, a different story).

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Several years ago Pepper Mill and i went on vacation in Ireland. We rented a car, and I drove (Pepper doesn’t drive a stick, and automatics are ludicrously expensive to rent in Ireland).
I have never seen a more insane bunch of drivers in my life. And I’m from New Jersey, and now live in Boston.
I’m not saying they’re Bad drivers. Compared to my compatriots they are, by and large, excellent drivers. But they’re clearly insane. Many of the roads in Ireland are, no hyperbole, narrower than my driveway. They have sudden twists and curves that are completelt blind because of trees, hedges, and stone walls. Cars share these roads with horse-drawn carts, trucks (lorries), cyclists, and herds of sheep and cows. Yet they drive as fast as if they’re on a straight road with unobstructed vision.
Accidents, it seems to me, are inevitable. There’s absolutely no way you can see a slow-moving horse-drawn haycart coming at you on a one-car-wide road around a tree-and-hedge-blocked curve.

Miraculously, the Irish normally don’t have accidents. I cannot come up with a rational reason why. They must have some sort of clairvoyance, or around-the-corner vision denied the rest of us. I had the joy of being chauffered around the countryside by our irish host at one point. He zipped down the twisty lanes far faster than I would ever dare, what with my sense of self-preservation, avoiding all and sundry. at one pioint he stopped short and avoided plowing into a herd of cattle that took up the entire road. I still don’t know how he did it.
So I’m not surprised about Irish accidents. I’m just surprised the numbers aren’t higher.

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No, we’re just arrogant enough to THINK that we have, and also that this clairvoyance is just as sharp while pissed drunk. It’s gotten to the point where there is a radio ad which plays a lot before publid holidays and such, at any time day or night which goes, and I quote,

“Don’t be such a fuckin’ eejit. Don’t drink and drive.”

The softly softly ah come on lads lay off the oul drink driving approach just wasnt working.

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I know my wife’s aunt won’t even have a shandy when she goes a-visiting during the holiday season, due to the drink-driving checkpoints – but the rest of the year, it’s fair game.
I’m here to attest to the general insanity of Irish drivers: A number of years ago, driving the ring roads around the lakes of Killarney. Gorgeous, stunning – and damned near deadly. No-one had put up signs indicating that there was an open-course road rally going on, and it wasn’t until we started getting overtaken by cars with numbers on their sides that I got a clue. To make matters worse, I got stuck behind a tour bus, and every time one of these speed demons would come up behind, they’d swerve between the bus & us, until they could overtake the bus. I almost went over a cliff-edge several times, and the first chance I had, I pulled over, and sat there shaking and hyperventilating.
And don’t me started on Dublin’s* an lar * traffic situation …