Reality and Reality
Posted on October 10, 2006
Filed Under Rant, customer service, death, la-la-land, transport | Leave a Comment
A young man from Kells was fined €1,000 today after being found guilty of driving at 180 miles per hour in Co Monaghan. hehe, My first thoughts, were ‘wow, what car was he driving‘ and ‘wow, where did he find a road free of lorries to build up to that speed‘. Mental note to self: grow up and adopt a mature attitude to road safety.
Speed aside, I’m amazed he found a road with no lorries clogging it. Since Iarnrod Eireann (our nationalised and very unionised train company) stopped offering freight services, all goods in this country are transported by lorry. Think about it – almost everything in front of you got there by road. We live in a crazy, crazy country. I think our politicians are too busy counting their cash to pay attention to the real world.
In the real world, a man was shot by police as he emerged from the house he had barricaded himself in for the last day or two. He had shot at the police with a shotgun before the siege began and he started firing again as he exited the house. I’m open to correction but I don’t think he made any attempt to communicate with the police during the stand-off. As he exited the house firing his shotgun, the police tried shooting him with bean bags. When that didn’t work (!!), they shot him once with a live round. He survived.
On the various radio vox pops I listened to today, public reaction, especially from rural people, was incredibly naive. People worried that the police may have over-reacted, especially considering that the man came from a good family. The proper response came from a former military officer who put it best when he said,
‘Shooting bean bags (from a shotgun) at a man is not sensible when the other man has real bullets in his shotgun. If you can hit him with the beanbag, he can certainly hit you with the live rounds’.
Anyway, the speeding driver reminded me of the time I had to do an advanced driving course…Advanced driving as in driving very slowly. My employers are very safety-aware (they don’t wanna be sued) so those of us with company vehicles had to do one of these courses. After the one day course, I felt sorry for the teacher who had to put up with me during the one-to-one course. The first half of the day was ‘classroom’ teaching where he used visual aids to impress on me what safe and responsible driving was. I kept disagreeing with him and postulated I was such a good driver that other road-users should move over and let me drive un-impeded. My ‘conspiracy theory’ on how lorry drivers were plotting against me left him wondering about my mental health.
Things got worse when he attempted to start the practical driving session in the afternoon. He asked me some general questions about where the oil and water resevoirs were and how often I checked the tyre pressures etc. Every day is the right answer in case you ever get asked!! In truth I was a bit embarrassed when he discovered that one of the tyres was a bit bald. But rather than give ground, I said that the ‘little people’ (mechanics, not the fairies!) looked after that when I got the car serviced in the garage. He started to get visibly annoyed at this stage but, to his credit, he remained professional.
He refused to get into my car so we had to use one of the company vans. I wasn’t familiar with it. And because the brakes were quick to bite when pressed, I nearly put us through the windscreen everytime I braked! I did try to drive properly as I realised I’d probably gone too far in goading him. He did get his revenge though. We pulled into a shopping centre carpark. When he asked me to reverse park between two cars, I did but he wasn’t impressed. I should have done it a particular way. Revenge one to him.
Then he asked me to pull out and drive away. I did but it was ‘No, No, No‘. Revenge two started with him doing the driving. He re-reversed into the space between the two cars. Quite well, I must admit, and it’s a technique I use these days. Then, as he pulled out, he put his indicator on to exit the parking space in the shopping centre carpark. When he got to the top of the lane (in the shopping centre carpark), he again used the indicator before he pulled out. It would appear to be a good idea to display one’s intentions when driving. Or so he advised. But since the car park was mostly empty (of people), the only people who would have learned of my intentions would have been the operator watching the security cameras.
He gave everyone a grade at the end of the lessons. On a scale of one to four, four meant you were a safe, considerate and good driver. I got one! Everyone else got three or four. If he could have given me a zero, I’m pretty sure he would have. He strongly recommended I get additional training. I wondered in my mind if he would have come back to teach me! I informed our H&S guy about my result and whether I should get additional training. It turned out there was no need. I had done the course and got my ‘piece of paper‘. The training cert was all he needed for his records. The reality was that the company was now covered from an insurance, legal and H&S point of view.
I guess there’s all kinds of reality out there.
P.S. I’m getting all defensive already. In case you think I’m a danger to other road users, I should point out that, in over 15 years of driving, I’ve only had one minor accident (at 18 years of age) and maybe 3 speeding tickets. The last ticket was five years ago.
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