Sir, - In an excellent article on road safety (An Irishman's Diary, 21st July) Kevin Myers expressed surprise that when he writes a column on this topic, he receives no follow-up letters from readers.
As a person who wrote many letters on this subject, almost all of them published in your paper, I used to share Kevin Myers's puzzlement. Was it not as evident to every other driver as it was to me that there was a lot of reckless behaviour going completely unchallenged on our roads? Did the death, disablement and injury toll not single out this area as requiring the most urgent public demand for increased investment of resources, especially visible Garda patrols and suitable penalties for offenders? If the 500 deaths were from AIDS or tuberculosis, wouldn't the public be outraged at a display of such indifference by those with responsibility to act?
Having puzzled over this for years, I recently came across an explanation in a book by Milan Kundera. Apparently, it's all to do, not with reality, but with symbols. Kundera points out that the case of one person condemned to death by capital punishment can rouse passions and protests worldwide because of the strong symbolism of the executioner image. On the other hand, 500 road deaths annually leave most of us unmoved because "death in the guise of a handsome car actually represents life; this smiling death is confused with modernity, freedom, adventure. . ."
Bearing the above in mind, I think it's time that cars, like cigarettes, carried a Government health warning and that car manufacturers, like tobacco companies, were sued for irresponsible advertising by the victims of their potentially lethal merchandise. - Yours, etc.,
Cecilia McGovern, Wellington Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.