I don’t remember reading any of the previous news reports about this, but it is one of the saddest stories I have seen for a long time.
Cerys Edwards was 11 months old when the car she was travelling in was hit head-on by a psychopath (Antonio Boparan) driving at over 70mph in a 30mph zone and on the wrong side of the road. This total imbecile – the son of a millionaire – had only passed his test 6 months earlier, and yet was driving a Range Rover Sport – an über-pratmobile.
Boparan served 6 months of a 21 month sentence for dangerous driving.
Cerys, now 6, spent two years in hospital, underwent numerous operations, and is now dependent on a ventilator and has to be fed via a tube. You shudder when you weigh up her life expectancy on the one hand, with the quality of her life on the other.
Of course, sheer criminal stupidity isn’t just the domain of the young – as the case of Cassie McCord quite clearly shows.
And let’s not be fooled into thinking that it isn’t a big problem. Doing the job I do obviously 
keeps me out on the roads a lot, and it is a daily occurrence to witness absolute stupidity. For example, today I was driving through Bramcote coming up to the junction with Wollaton Vale. On the 60mph stretch we were tailgated by a woman in a silver Vauxhall (reg. no. YS01 LGS). As we slowed to 30mph she obviously didn’t like it – and she liked it even less when we indicated to turn right, so she couldn’t overtake. So she went on to the other side of the road just so she could get to the traffic lights in front of us – and she had to do it at considerably greater than 30mph. Anything could have happened if someone had emerged from Wollaton Vale while she was doing it. Her behaviour was no different to Boparan’s in the story above, and could have had similar – or worse – consequences.
But this one was unbelievable. Driving through Clifton later, approaching the A453, 
another car and me were in the non-bus lane in order to overtake a bus, which had stopped at a bus stop. We then had to stop at a crossing as a School Patrol ushered kids across. This baboon in a silver Vauxhall Astra estate (reg. no. Y699 OTM) initially stopped behind me, but I saw him swing into the bus lane when he saw the bus get ready to move off. As the Patrol stepped off the crossing and the lights changed, he floored it and managed to squeeze back into the non-bus lane in front of the car ahead of me, and then shot off at considerably greater than 30mph over the speed bumps. I went past him at the lights – he was, naturally, in the outside lane in a queue while the inside one was empty. I hope he can lip read, because he saw me mouth “twat” at him as I went by. But I think he knew that anyway. Again, this total tosser could have mowed down any number of kids, with appalling consequences.
And later, on my way to the last lesson of the day, a plumber’s van had got itself into the “fast” lane on Trent Bridge – the one where you have to stop to give way to traffic coming off Radcliffe Road if you time it badly. I was in the inside lane, where you just carry straight on to the bridge if you time things properly and safely. I indicated to move into the next lane once on the bridge, but by then Mr Plumber had started moving and he was one of those whose idea of safe driving is to try to prevent anyone else from moving until he has done what he wants. So he floored it to try and stop me. Having failed to accelerate fast enough, he then did the full-on Road Rage bit by trying to ram the side of me at the crossing we stopped at, and then cut in dangerously at the next set of lights – just to make a point (or what passes for a point among the lower primates). He then managed top cut in front of other people further, as a result of highly questionable speed in a 30mph zone during rush hour. I’m tempted to name the plumbing company involved, but I won’t.
Yes, it is a HUGE problem.