Driving and Crazy

By Grace Jolliffe on December 2, 2022 in Uncategorized

Don’t be fooled by the photograph: the horse and cart are rare beasts in the west of Ireland, and Galway is as full of fast-moving traffic as the rest of the country.

I learned that when I was driving along the very busy main Galway to Limerick road and suddenly decided to stop my car abruptly amid fast-moving traffic.

As you can imagine, it created a bit of chaos, but you know how it is when you have a sudden urge to fix your hair, put some makeup on, have a sandwich, call a friend for a chat about the weekend and generally have a little rest.

I mean, what the hell? The traffic could go around me, couldn’t they?

No, not really.

This much was true: I was driving along the very busy Galway to Limerick road. But I didn’t stop my car abruptly in fast-moving traffic. Instead, my car simply ground to a halt in a matter of seconds.

And I do mean just stopped. The engine simply died.

I tried my best to keep the car moving under its own steam so I could at least roll it to the side of the road, but I ran out of steam.

I put on my hazard lights and tried to restart the engine. It started – for one second, then died. The cars behind slowed down and…no, actually, that’s a lie – they didn’t.

Not all – some of them kept coming towards me at the same speed only to realize at the last second that my car wasn’t going to get out of the way – forcing them to steer right, forcing the cars behind them to steer right….and generally causing mayhem.

It wasn’t one or two cars either. Even though my hazard lights were on – and the car was clearly broken down, many other cars/vans and even lorries were doing the same thing.

Do people really think that their own naked aggression will somehow shift a car out of their way?

Apparently yes.

I got out and rang the AA. I lost count as car after car did the last-second swerve thing. I also lost count of the enraged faces, shaking fists and fingers.

Judging by the rage, I can only assume that they really did think I’d stopped my car in the middle of the road to do my hair and eat a sandwich.

Why did it not occur to them that the car had simply broken down?

Why did it not occur to them that nobody in their right mind would simply stop a car in traffic unless there was a serious problem?

Maybe there’s something about driving that causes some people to lose all rational thinking. Are some drivers so affronted by any sort of obstacle in their golden path that the only coping mechanism they can enlist is to go bonkers?

I don’t know but what I do know is that there could have been a serious accident that day.

That there wasn’t is nothing short of a miracle.

By the way, there was a happy ending. A woman had seen the chaos from her window and came out to help. She enlisted two local men.

One of them asked me, ‘is there petrol in it?’ The other one asked, ‘have you tried turning the engine on?’

I can’t tell you how hard it was not to tell them where to stick their help, but the thought of my car being smashed to bits helped me bite my tongue, so I accepted their offer to ‘push it to the side,’ and thankfully survived to tell this tale.