December 19, 2009

How does the snowplough driver get to work?

spent a great deal of my time on the M4 and M25 yesterday. And as I enjoyed my close-up view of this country’s total inability to cope with a couple of inches of snow and waited patiently to be rescued by a snowplough, I began to wonder. How exactly does the guy who drives the snowplough get to work?

And how does he get to the road? The main problem with the M4 yesterday was not so much that the road was impassable – but that nobody could get off it. So all the junctions were completely clogged up with stationary traffic. I am sure the BBC and other news channels were overjoyed at the traffic paralysis. And I did actually hear of a few people with worse trips than me.

For example – some people were stuck in a tesco car park for longer than I was imprisoned on the M4. Others had to abandon their cars and walk. Now as any of you will who have ventured outside in recent days, the council doesn’t value your life at all. Eventually, most roads are salted and gritted. But I have yet to find a pavement that isn’t slippery as a sheet of ice. Which means of course that you have to walk in the road.

This got me thinking. If the council is so certain that we don’t need pavements when the roads are at the most hazardous, why do we have pavements at all? If drivers in the ice and snow can cope, by and large, with grannies tottering around in the slush in front of them, why don’t we dig up all the pavements and have people walking in the road all the time?

Yes, I’ll admit my brainwave sounds dangerous. But this has actually been tried before in far-sighted places. And lo and behold – accidents plummet because people drive more carefully

How does the snowplough driver get to work?

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