The AA, Eircell and Esso recently published a leaflet containing safety tips that is so bizarre it must have been written by M. Jacques Tati. Its most perfect piece of advice is: "Never take notes or look up numbers while driving." It thus exceeds by a handsome mile - or 1.6 kilometres, according to the dual measurement system foisted on us by the geniuses who manage our roads - that previous Nobel prize-winner for traffic cretinisms: the little sign on the back of lorries, instructing cyclists, "Do not overtake on the inside (left) of the vehicle when it is turning left."
Those who sit in authority over our traffic management must presume - and probably rightly - that Irish drivers are so ill-trained that it is necessary to supply them with advice like that. (Is it surprising they are so badly trained, when anyone who has passed the test can call themselves a driving instructor?)
Naas dual-carriageway
There is so much more similar advice one could give. "Do not use a telescope to search for sunspots while driving an articulated truck."
"Never place a loaded shotgun in the mouth while driving a 4 x 4 over rough terrain."
"Abstain from sexual intercourse while reversing this 40 ton dumper into a Montessori classroom."
"Do not wash your feet while driving down country lanes at over 50 miles an hour."
The prime example of pathological imbecilism being mistaken for a statement of intelligent and coherent will is on the Naas dual-carriageway, which at six lanes is the widest strip of road in the State, and where the maximum speed is a ludicrous 40 m.p.h. If you actually obeyed the law at this point, you would be turned into a flattened tin of strawberry jam. Average speeds here are not less than 60 m.p.h.; many cars are travelling at over 80 m.p.h.
The speed limit appears to have the purpose and the wit of a child's doodle - as do all the other apparently random speed limits on the very road where speed consistency should be paramount.
As I am almost ill with pointing out - and with as much political impact as a butterfly's wings in Lurgan upon the orbit of Halley's Comet - we are the only country in the world which as a matter of intent baffles, bemuses and bewilders our motorists by employing two measurement systems on roads, metric and imperial. But nowhere are incoming travellers warned of this. It is almost as if we revel in a culture of obfuscation and danger.
Hardly surprisingly, we construct motorways, but do not construct the safety systems that are the norm throughout so many EU countries, such as hazard signals lowering speed limits in poor driving conditions. Is there one signal in the entire Republic warning drivers to slow down because of poor weather ahead? And how long before in its absence we have a multi-car, multi-death pile-up, even as our drivers are being solemnly advised not to embroider tapestries or conduct choirs in Beethoven's "Ninth" while taking bends at speed?
Mobile phones
When the leaflet mentioned above was launched, the public affairs manager of the AA, Conor Faughnan, said that drivers using mobile phones while they drove made six times more mistakes than non-phoners. Good. Excellent. What many of us have thought for a long time. If driving with a couple of glasses of wine inside you, without error, and within the speed limit, can cost you your licence, then surely engaging in an activity which increases risk six-fold should surely attract vigorous punishment.
Actually, no. That nice Mr Dempsey - who has appeared in this space before, and no doubt will again, on the issue of his stewardship of our roads - assured the launch of the aforementioned leaflet that he would not make it illegal to use hand-held mobile phones while driving. Why not? All the evidence of our senses is that people who drive and use hand-held mobile phones simultaneously are dangers, both to themselves, which is fine - desirable, even - and to others, which is neither: they have placed their feet upon a ladder heading down from safety and common sense, the bottom rung of which is reserved for people who think they can drive as they play a world championship table-tennis final with a rear-seat passenger. Why should drivers nearby be expected to get on the ladder with them?
Country roads
But never mind the perils of mobile phone users, or the mass manslaughter which will inevitably occur on one of our major roads; the real killing fields at the moment are our country roads, where the general speed limit of 60 m.p.h. applies, though those roads were designed for asses and carts. Yet outside every village in Ireland, drivers are given the cheery go-ahead with the GSL sign, the black diagonal on the white background which stands as a bar to common sense and a pointer to an early grave - and all by government policy.
A policy which permits such heartless butchery will one day be regarded as being as incomprehensibly barbaric and witlessly backward as the slave trade, female circumcision and the servitude of child chimneysweeps. But that day is not remotely near, alas.