UNSAFETY FILM
Seen the new road safety advert on TV, to teach people how to overtake? High time too, we all know that the standard of overtaking is appalling in this country - like the standard of every other single aspect of driving in fact. The roads get newer and faster, the cars get newer and faster, but the crap old driving remains. Hazzard county looks like a model of precaution and courtesy by comparison. So they've come to the conclusion that the only way they'll improve our driving is by giving us extra tuition during commercial breaks. Clever.
I see why they start with this. We overtake like it's some sort of ritual challenge to the gods. A mindless defiance of fate, like playing Russian roulette. Like playing Russian roulette with an automatic. So this advert explains, carefully and clearly, how to overtake in safety. The solid and the broken white line. Mirror, signal, pull out and so on. It's all done in an exemplary way, shot nicely from the outside looking into the car, from the driver's point of view, from helicopter. A fine job of filming, and a piece of overtaking well done.
Except, he's approaching a bend. A right hand bend. With a high bank. (Note to online readers: we drive on the left in Ireland. Or at least we're supposed to.) Mother of God, that's a blind bend! Nobody should be overtaking there. You can actually see from the driver's POV shots that he only has a few seconds of visible road ahead. There could be a speeding articulated lorry full of dangerous chemicals coming in the opposite direction. It being an Irish road, there probably is. This is the purest distilled madness. What came over them?
Maybe the director thought that nobody was going to watch a safety ad if it didn't have an element of danger.
Speaking of things with wheels that go along the road - yes, this is another of my incredibly tenuous links - I was watching the Tour de France. No, I wasn't watching it. Who watches it? It's a bunch of men on bikes, it does not make for gripping TV. I was, to be more accurate, overhearing Tour de France coverage on Euronews while messing on the internet. But I was paying sufficient attention to be puzzled. They have an 'official water'. That bugs me, 'official water'. How can water be in any sense official? Will riders be disqualified for drinking an unofficial water? For sweating unofficial water? I can take official snacks, official beer even (I can take more or less any beer), but... water is too pure and fundamental a thing for that kind of nonsense. And it's unscientific. In nature there are two and only two different kinds of water: heavy water, and new water lite.