Irish Road Insanity – The Five Minute Test

IS IT JUST ME or have Irish roads become complete insanity zones more akin to Mad Max territory then our perceived normality? It used to be the speed freaks that caused the issues – cap wearing, acne ridden petrol heads in souped up wrecks who were only short of beating NASA for lift off speeds away from the lights. After speed demons it was drunks. Then joy riders. Now that we have these wonderfully relevant speed limits on our delightful roads – the threat has changed once again into something even worse. Now we have a combination of terrified folks (afraid to loose a few more points) driving at exactly the speed limit – causing chaos behind them. This gang are then joined by our ancient friends, the wrinklies… driving cars from another century at even slower speeds. And then to really spice things up we have a bunch of foreign nationals who never took driving lessons, don’t quite get the concept of sides or lanes on a road and basically drive like they are in an open field. You think I’m overstating things?… well I’ve got a 5 minute test which will really open your eyes on the road!

The Five Minute Test

It’s gone from mad to bad and then worse over the last 10 years, but it’s now got to the stage where I’m pretty confident that if you pay attention, you will witness at least one near miss or narrowly avoided accident on any route on any day at any particular time you care to mention while driving around Dublin. Think I’m exaggerating? Go try it. Next time you pop out for the papers at a weekend, or drive into work during the week – just watch the clock and pay attention to the road around you – and just count the number of completely insane near misses. You will be surprised at how adept your brain has become in filtering these things out to the point where if you don’t concentrate on them, you don’t even register the near miss – you simply avoid it and move along because it has become so commonplace.

Seriously – try it. Take 5 minutes, and just watch the potential carnage in front, beside and behind you. It’s absolutely out of control out there on our roads at the mo!.