I have been invited to take part, as a representative of the ShiteDrivers.com web site, in the audience of a televised panel discussion programme to be screened on UTV Television, which is being recorded in their Belfast studios this Friday afternoon (May 2nd).
The programme, “Late & Live” will have, among the topics tackled, the issue of young drivers and “boy racers” in Northern Ireland.
I’ve also been asked to find out if there are any ShiteDrivers.com contributors or readers who feel they could add something to this debate and would like to take part in it. If there are, please send an email to me at Admin@ShiteDrivers.com (as soon as possible) letting me know and I’ll put you in touch with the programme producers.
See comments for more info on this.
Niall O’Keeffe
6 Comments
I really am annoyed with the whole “boy racer” myth. I’m more of your “White Van Man” with a bit of classic car enthusiast thrown in, but I will have to charge in defence of performance car enthusiasts.
The most common mistake people make is to confuse joyriders with car enthusiasts and somehow merge them into one in their mind.
There are 2 main categories of drivers, good and bad, but if they happen to drive a modified car they are immediatly targeted because they are different and don’t conform to our “safe” stereotype of grey people in grey suites driving grey cars.
If someone speeds or drives dangerously he is at fault and liable to be fined and get points. And that is just as much Mondeo Man and White Van Man and more often than not it’s these two types that behave the most appalingly. Every time I see a modfied car it’s being driven rather carefully, it’s like having a giant target painted on.
But because car enthusiasts dare to be different they are targeted by our primeavel fear of the unknown and different, a trait often displayed by people whose brains haven’t yet evovled enough to be able to differentiate between stereotypes and actual real life people.
And I believe the government isn’t exactly helping.
So by targeting a single group and blaming all ills on them it will destract the average moron from the reality that we are all responsible out there and cannot simply put all the blame onto one easily identifiable group of people.
Good point, Jochen… and hey, if there’s any particular points you’d like me to try to raise while on the programme, feel free to put them in comments here (or email them to me).
There are all different kinds of drivers.
There’s White Van Man, Mondeo Rep Man, Women Drivers, Taxi Drivers, Modified Car Enthusiasts, Elderly Drivers, Truck Drivers, Bus Drivers and many other kinds of drivers.
And there are Shite Drivers.
Belonging to any of the above categories or any other category of drivers does not automatically make you a Shite Driver.
It’s your behavior that decides that.
We should have evolved beyond the stage where we point at a modified car and grunt the words: “He’s wot’s wrong wif da road, he, I knew it was dem boyracers all along”
Which is why I’m a sworn enemy of preloading the premium of some drivers and cut others a better deal.
Everyone should start the same and get punished/rewarded according to their behavior on the road.
Simply pointing at a group of motorists and putting all blame on them is nothing but a lazy, hackneyed excuse for a road safety campaign when you can’t be arsed to tackle the real isses, which to my mind should be driver training, road and public transport improvement, enforcement and forward planning (unknown here).
Just back from Belfast, 1/2 an hour ago. There were plenty of people getting their say in and I didn’t get a chance to say as much as I wanted to.
Basically, I touched on there being a need for more and better education, using the new Transition Year Programme down here as an example.
I had loads of pages of notes memorised as best I could and I meant to say more - I wanted to at least make clear the distinction between the two types of young drivers - the accident-causing offenders (joyriders) - and the car modifiers and enthusiasts - two types which regularly get unfairly tarred with the one brush - but I believe someone else in the audience made that point. There were plenty of people in the audience with more important stories than me, to be honest and I’m glad they were heard.
The programme goes out on UTV on Monday coming (May 5th) at 11pm. I’m on the left (or right from the viewers point of view) of the back row of the audience, sitting next to Letterkenny Councillor Damien Blake. I’m cringing at the thought of seeing myself on TV - as I’ve said, mine is definitely a face for radio!
Incidentally, if you’re in Ireland, have Sky Digital and haven’t got UTV tuned in, you can add it to your “Other Channels”. The frequency is “10906 V 22.0 5/6″ and there are full instructions for adding it here.
I sent in a text but I was raped inside marriage by a husband who beat me for five years. It is up to us to decide what we do. It is very unfair on us that men can control us. This make me very angry. I lost the baby through what I did to my own body which nearly killed me. Abortion would have been easier. there are special circumstances when you have been raped but if someone gets pregnant because of carelessness its there own fault.
I was raped inside marriage by a husband who beat me for five years. It is up to the individual themselves to decide what we do. It is very unfair on us that men can control us. This makes me very angry. I lost the baby through what I did to my own body which nearly killed me. Abortion would have been easier. There are special circumstances when you have been raped but if someone gets pregnant because of carelessness its there own fault. Only someone who has been in this situation can tell whats right or wrong. Honestly how the hell would a man know. Remember they think by whats in their trousers. The government needs to get a life and put a woman in charge of this who has been there. Its like a midwife coming in to tell you how to bring up your kids yet they have none of their own. How would they know how hard it is and how we sink into depression?
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[...] racers’ in Northern Ireland. If anyone reading this is interested in taking part too, read this. I’ve never been to Belfast before, nevermind to the studios of UTV… should be [...]