I feel compelled to pen this blog post following a road traffic accident which I narrowly avoided in Harrogate today.
Here’s what happened:
At around 8.50am this Monday morning I was driving my car slowly down Queen’s Parade, Harrogate, from the Stray towards the old, empty police station, with my wife and two children in the car. All of a sudden, a little black car, driven by a young lady engrossed in conversation, performed an illegal right turn from Station Avenue and cut straight in front of me. Just as she was about to crash into my driver’s side I made an emergency stop. I thumped the horn, because she hadn’t even seen me.
We paused a few seconds, dumbfounded as to what had happened. My wife and I were grateful that our two children, who have a combined age of three, weren’t injured by this outrageous bit of driving. My heart pounded.
Shaken, we followed the road around, down North Park Road, towards the roundabout near the Odeon. On the way we came across the little black car (you know who you are) parked on the left. As we passed the lady apologised profusely, as well she might.
It made me wonder whether the drivers of Harrogate are any worse than the national average, and what the most dangerous road is in Harrogate.
And it also made me wonder whether people who haven’t been in a road traffic accident, or who haven’t lost a loved one on the roads as I have done, or haven’t represented people injured in road traffic accidents, are just blasé about the risk of injury on the roads. Parents worry about stranger-danger, but the main risk we expose our children to is our roads.
Nearly 2,000 people are killed on the roads each year out of massive 730,000 road traffic accident casualties. At Truth Legal we make a donation of RoadPeace charity because we understand that road deaths are not normal deaths.
Thank goodness that there wasn’t another six people added to these figures today. My unrealistic hope is that the other driver books herself onto a driver improvement course, so poor was her driving.
