Godfrey's Gospel: 'M9 motorway crash an accident waiting to happen'

AS a parent, I have all the sympathy in the world for the parents of those teenagers who lost their lives in the horrific head-on collision on the M9 motorway last week.

That said, I have even more sympathy for the families and friends of the occupants of the other car – all of whom are lucky to be alive – all of whom will remember that incident for the rest of their lives and all of whom will also carry the scars of that dreadful smash, I won’t call it an accident, and possibly life-changing injuries for the rest of their lives.

I have been in several serious accidents over the years – the last one was in January 2019, when, after a momentary lapse in concentration by me, I ended up driving under the rear of a trailer on the M7 and seconds later all that was left of the car was the steering wheel and me holding it. To this day, I remember every second of that ‘accident’ and still don’t know how I managed to walk away with only two broken ribs.

Thankfully, and this I am really grateful for, no one else was injured as a result of my stupidity. My ego was bruised along with the broken ribs, but that was all. I genuinely don’t know how I would have coped if I knew my actions had resulted in someone else being seriously injured or worse.

Dying is forever; there is no comeback from that. Equally life-changing injuries mean just that – life-changing. The survivors of that horrific head-on collision have a long road to recovery ahead of them – and may never fully recover.

I said I won’t call that horrific smash an accident, because it wasn’t. Those three sisters and young child were the unfortunate ones to be struck by the BMW because, don’t fool yourself, someone was going to suffer. That car had been deliberately driven on the wrong side of the road – and for what – to goad the gardaí into following them so they could post it on social media to boast to their friends and for ‘likes.’ If the gardaí had taken action to prevent them driving down that slipway onto the wrong side of the motorway, don’t make any mistake about it, they would be facing a severe reprimand or worse today. Someone would be shouting from the rooftop about garda brutality and God knows what else – all because they were trying to do their job and keep the roads safe for the rest of us.

Remember, the occupants of the Hyundai car were innocently on their way to the airport, just like thousands of us do every day. It could have been me or you, your brother or sister, parent, partner, children. We were the lucky ones. Those three sisters and young child were the unlucky ones.

What is really annoying is this reckless behaviour is all to do with posting clips on social media so the occupants of these killing machines – because that is what they have turned those vehicles into – can boast to their friends and get ‘likes’ in return.

Hasn’t life become very cheap in this country? To think a ‘like’ on a social media site is so important that people risk taking the lives of others, or losing their own, just to get one.

This trend has to be put to a stop now. We are not interested in hearing all the excuses about why the gardaí can’t stop the drivers. Call a spade a spade – they are not being let do their job. We have become so obsessed in being politically correct in this country that there are excuses for everything, but especially when it comes to law and order.

We call for more gardaí, we complain about them never being around when you want one, about not doing their job, we complain about them using too much force, we complain about them shooting ducks in a barrel with regard to speed traps – we complain about everything they do – and yet we won’t let them do their job.

A few years ago, a man wandered around the streets in Dublin with a knife in his hand, injured the manager of a supermarket and then threatened gardaí. He clearly had mental health issues – that’s a given – but he did have a knife, did assault and injure an innocent man and then, when he was shot by the gardaí when he failed to surrender himself – the gardaí were deemed wrong for doing their job.

We also saw what happened to a garda who gave chase to another vehicle on the Naas dual carriageway – also being driven on the wrong side of the road. That car crashed into a sign and the occupants died. Again, I have sympathy for the families of the occupants of that car, but they could have killed innocent people that night. What happened afterwards – you got it – the garda was prosecuted.

In this country, a garda has the right to stop and prosecute you or me for driving in excess of 120km per hour – up to a limit – we don’t know what that limit is. But when it gets really dangerous, they are told to stand down or else it is their careers and possibility their liberty which is at risk. Naturally, they stand down, as the gardaí were told to do last week, and we saw how that ended.

If we want to rid our roads of this latest social media craze, there is only one way to do so. Stop those cars before they smash into other road users. They do it in other countries all the time. We see it on social media where the police give no quarter to such drivers and when they’re caught, the courts act likewise.