FIGURES released from a recent police road safety operation, ironically named “Regal”, showed another unsettling piece of evidence that there are many in our community who consider the operation of a motor vehicle on public roads more a right to be flaunted than a responsibility.
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Many people will have been alarmed at the startling results of the operation’s drug tests which found at least 12 drivers on one night alone to be under the influence of ice. This number has since grown with numerous other cases of drivers caught under the influence of cannabis and other drugs.
For those who try to do the right thing on the roads, and whose worst offence is an intemperate and costly 4km over the speed limit, this kind of flaunting of the law is justifiably outrageous.
As with alcohol before it, the stupidity of the naivete that claims it was only a little way home or just a little bit over the limit, “just a bit whacked” has been the sorry and irreversible excuse behind so many tragedies.
While this editorial has advocated harsher penalties as part of the approach, by no means do we believe it can be a total solution. Anger is not enough.
If the vituperative condemnation of an editorial or the lachrymose anger of yet another victim’s family were enough to change the habits of these thoughtless drivers we all might embark on the roads without a fear. But alas no.
We have all seen them out there, the drivers who not only have transgressed any right to drive but come close to forfeiting their right as humans; by way of choice chemicals they have destroyed the mechanism for reason.
The grotesque insensitivity, almost infantile solipsism of the average ice addict is hardly likely to heed the warnings of the suffering, let alone struggle to interpret the moralising of the written word.
So in many ways, like alcohol before it, the police and media can only do so much.
A longer term solution must come from a cultural change in our approach to our use of motor vehicles and what culpability we carry if we choose to use drugs.
For the ugly narcissists already out there on the road it might be too late, but for the generations to come we might still have the power to make them think of others and avoid unnecessary tragedy.