Following the death of Princess Diana in a car accident in Paris, the cult of building shrines at the site of a tragic accident has grown. They now occur at irregular intervals along most of our country roads, and last week, another was added after a motorbike hit a tractor on the main road next to our village. A few wilting flowers tied to the signpost are a grim reminder of another life lost in an instant.
The announcement on the same day that many speed cameras up and down the country are to be removed was greeted by many as a fine gesture from a government that is finally binning the Big Brother mentality of its predecessors. However, as a parent whose eldest son is just starting to drive, I was horrified by the message it sends out to him and his friends.
True, I curse when I receive a speeding ticket, but I know the rules and that they’re for my safety. I also know that I drive slower because of them. What the Government will achieve by this decision will be fewer cameras but many more shrines. To paraphrase a famous shooting saying, all the speeding fines ever collected are not worth the price of one man dead.
