h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I got a 'phone call this weekend, to tell me that my mum's cousin, G, had been killed. He was a much loved father and a very intelligent man who could charm the birds from the trees with his conversation. He was 70 but he was a ridiculously fit man who could pass for one 20 years his junior. He cycled around his village in Northampton every day. He went out to visit his friend Friday evening and never came back. They found him by the side of the road, with massive head injuries and a mangled bicycle.

Somebody somewhere took an unacceptable risk, whether driving too fast for their own reactions or under the influence of drink. But they went and selfishly did it all the same knowing that one day there'd be consequences. And they couldn't even be bothered to stop afterwards.

Sorry to hear that.

I'll refrain from any comments I might like to make about drivers. Not the time or place, and most people here know my opinions in that direction anyway.

There's nowhere to go with the anger this brings up, and that anger eats away inside.

Remember the good times FM, and tell people about him.

Stuart.

I'm not especially angry about his death. I would, however, get rather angry if I read a similar thread where it had transpired that the deceased had been the architect rather than the victim of circumstances that led to his death but this was being drowned out by an outpouring of emotion.

I get angry about habitually selfish behaviour and the trail of wreckage it leaves behind in people's lives. I get angry about speeding drivers. Angry about alcoholics who only care where the next drink is coming from. Or empty-headed morons whose sole ambition is to do a ton through a village full of cyclists and pedestrians.

But not half as angry as I could get with responders who immediately start offering cuddles and hugs to people who have beeen affected by such behaviour, instead of posing some simple but uncomfortable questions about personal responsibility, simply because they don't like to be seen as being unsympathetic. It makes me want to drive around tearing bouquets off lamposts.

I am sorry to hear your cousin got knocked off his bike and killed. This is shocking news - especially that he was just left there!

There was a huge row in our local newspaper spanning months about a shrine that had been set up by the side of the road where a young man had been killed. These shrines are getting more 'popular', and the bouquets are half the time a danger due to the place people must stand to attach them! But in this case the argument was mostly 'your shrine is causing a distraction to drivers. Not only did your son kill himself by drink driving, he's now trying to kill other people'.

Another local man is awaiting trial after his very young daughter was killed out on a quadbike - she was driving on the road following dad in his range rover when another car hit her.

Nobody seems to have any sense anymore, and the worst thing is that it appears that everyone accepts road deaths as inevitable and 'normal'. Dog kills child - front page news, calls for more laws, dogs to be more controlled, yet cars kill children every day and nothing is done - except to complain about speed cameras...

Total sense from you as usual, Mina.

I think that instead of having little pretty collections of flowers next to accident blackspots, we should erect full colour billboards showing photographs of the road accident in all its gory detail. Cars cut in half by the impact, limbless torsos, crushed heads...

I admit I drive too fast at times, but never in a 30, 40 or 50 zone. If I break the speed limit it's on a motorway where the traffic is sparse or a country road in the daytime. I don't tailgate. I don't overtake without knowing what's ahead of me for the next half-mile or so. I also applaud speed cameras: the year before they were introduced on the Nottingham ringroad there were four fatal accidents. And then there were none.

He even made the local news:
http://www.daventrytoday.co.uk/news/Cyclist-dies-after-being-found.4073569.jp

Why do you not want sympathy? Many people find it helps.

I thought you were shunning me. You made a very public statement to that effect.

Please do me a favour and carry on, will you, there's a good chap?

I thought that an answer to this question might help me understand you. But apparently not.

Bit late in the day for that, wouldn't you say? I try to understand people *before* I go about condemning them publically, if at all.