I often wonder why one
bumps into quite so many things when one is driving a car. After all, most of
us have two eyes and a brake pedal and all we have to do is to drive slowly
in a straight line between traffic jams.
However, it seems that we are defeated by the simplest of tasks. If children
can pass their driving tests at 17, why do mature adults have so many accidents?
Admittedly we are sometimes too drunk or going too fast to be able to avoid
stray cyclists or pedestrians. As we age we fall prey to increasing distraction
as our powers of concentration wane. Advancing years also slows reaction time
and can produce a tendency to 'nod off without warning. All these factors can
explain the occasional bump. But what if we've only had a gin or two and allowed
plenty of time for the effects to wear off? What if we've finished our in-car
picnic, made our mobile phone calls, tuned the radio, and are comfortably settled
into our brushed pigskin ergonomically contoured bucket seat for a relaxing
drive home when we still crash? What if the only words you can find to explain
yourself are, "I'm sorry, officer, but I didn't see a thing."
I can sense some of my more extreme readers muttering "Well you bloody well
should be looking where you are going." But perhaps they were and they still
couldn't see. The Grim Reaper can reveal that a very large number of motorists
may quite literally be going blind.
It takes a lot to alarm the Grim Reaper after years of revealing the endlessly
imaginative ways in which the car has spread death, despondency and destruction
in its wake. When the Grim Reaper is alarmed, the world worries. Let me tell
you, dear lemmings, I'm very alarmed indeed.
Research uncovered by the Guardian newspaper and mentioned in passing has indicated
that there is a link between the huge increase in blindness in urban areas and
particulates from car exhaust lodging on the retina and causing macular degeneration.
The Grim Reaper believes there's no smoke without fire, and indeed this has
been confirmed by my subsequent research. Whilst a spokesperson for Bristol
Council (rather myopically I suspect) dismissed the theory as 'rather implausible',
a consultant source in the Bristol Eye Hospital has confirmed the likelihood
of a link. Blindness is increasing dramatically, he tells me, especially in
the developed urban world. Over the past 30 years, the number of people registering
blind with macular degeneration has increased by 50%, and all age groups have
been affected, though the greatest increase is amongst the elderly'. Research
is still in early stages but the prime suspects, he continues, include car pollution
and other environmental factors.
Time will no doubt prove the Grim Reaper right (as on many previous occasions),
that driving is not only a type of self abuse, but that it will also make us
all go blind.
So the next time you are cut up, dear reader, think twice before you accusingly
ask a driver if they're blind. They may indeed be blind or partially sighted,
and deserving of rather more sympathy. After all, it could be you next.