The N81 claimed another death on Christmas night. I don't know the circumstances, so I won't attribute blame; but this tragedy does allow me to observe that the N81 is now probably the worst road in Ireland.
It takes many skills to make a road as terrible as the N81: heroic negligence, colossal ineptitude, a sublime indifference to life and an utter disregard for legal and moral obligations. This is a combination that most reasonable people would assume would be impossible to concentrate in a single human organisation; but I think those answerable for the conditions on the N81 manage it.
The N81 carries a huge volume of traffic, but for most of its length it consists of just two lanes. Two lanes. Ha! For that word "two" is utterly meaningless on the N81, because the road is so atrociously marked that on most nights it is impossible to identify where its boundaries lie. The perimeter lines are either so eroded or even non-existent that the only way of knowing for sure where the side of the road ends is when your wheel runs into the verge.
Likewise, the central line is often virtually invisible. Unless oncoming traffic establishes where the other side of the road is, it can be difficult to know just where on the road you are. And this is in normal circumstances; at night, when it has been raining, and water is washing across the road in sheets, the centre line is simply invisible.
But most of all, the N81 is the main thoroughfare feeding the scores of sand and gravel pits of Wicklow. Many lorries leaving the pits are grotesquely overloaded - so much so that regular car-drivers on the road take it for granted that they will be hit by flying gravel hurtling like shrapnel from the tops of trucks. I have been hit on at least 20 occasions, miraculously without serious damage to my car. Most locals expect to lose a windscreen a year. One man I know lost two windscreens in two days.
Light sand shed by over-burdened lorries is less immediately dangerous, but it has lethal longer-term consequences. It forms a thin and glutinous muck which permanently covers the entire road. Even in dry weather, windscreens are made instantly opaque by the brown liquid film cascading from the wheels of vehicles ahead. After even light rain, driving down the N81 is like driving into a wind-tunnel blowing mud.
Enforcement of the loading laws would dramatically reduce the numbers of over-laden lorries and the almost systematic spreading of dangerous detritus on the roads. But in the six years I have been driving on the N81, I have seen just one Garda road-block; and I have seen no sign whatever of enforcement of the laws against overloading. Even though the road has some of the densest lorry-traffic in the country, no weigh-bridges seem to be in use.
But even if there were, what of it? Across the country, very few lorries are ever tested for overloading. And even when they are, instead of over-laden vehicles being impounded at the weigh-bridge until they are unloaded so as to conform with the law, it is standard Garda practice that overweight lorries are allowed to continue on their journey. It needs no words of mine to convey the grisly fatuity of such laxness.
But I haven't done yet. Not merely is the N81 a narrow and undifferentiated torrent of filth; it has recently also been the scene of road-works lasting many weeks. These invariably involved closing down half the width of the road with temporary traffic lights, or with baffled little men with flags and "Go" signs trying to co-ordinate their N81 river-dance.
This, of course, was no guarantee that any work was being done in the closed-down section. It merely meant that the road was half the width it should be.
But did those who commissioned the road works (whatever they were for) use this opportunity to improve the appalling markings on the road? No, they didn't. The central dividing line and both margin lines are now even more invisible than they were before.
Moreover, on those stretches where the central line is visible, it is often of the broken variety, which of course permits overtaking, though these authorisations to enter the lane for on-coming traffic sometimes seem to occur where there is limited visibility. They can be invitations to death, which are frequently and tragically accepted.
The N81 is now a disgrace, as a consequence of roads management policy. It doesn't need a great deal to bring some order and safety to the road: clear markings with cats' eyes and modern luminous paint, proper drainage where water spill-off occurs, and a clear reduction of speed limits on its more dangerous stretches.
But most of all, what it needs is enforcement of the law on the hundreds of overladen sand and gravel lorries that use it every day. For they are the authors of most of the N81's main problems.
But what do I expect from those responsible for ensuring the safety of road-users - gardaí, civil servants, politicians - to do in 2004 about the lethal condition of the N81? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.