In my column for the April issue of the Hawkesbury Parish News, I take issue with a local problem that’s also been making national news.
When I tell city-dwelling friends that our village is surrounded by single-track roads, they often react as if that’s idyllic, but confess to a fear of driving on narrow country lanes. They’d be even more frightened if they saw how peppered are lanes are with potholes.
No wonder my poor Fiat Panda has just failed its MOT due to faulty suspension. And no, it’s not due to my reckless driving over these craters.
I’m such a cautious, careful driver that I hadn’t noticed my car’s other fault, that the horn didn’t work, because I never use it.
Rumour has it that if potholes damage our tyres, we can claim the cost of repairs from the local council, provided we’ve already alerted them to the pothole responsible.
It might be simpler if we sent them a list of which stretches of local roads don’t have potholes. It would fit on the back of a council tax envelope.
I haven’t given up hope that the council will fix our local lanes eventually, because lately roadworks seem to be on every other road I travel. So rare is the journey uninterrupted by lane closures and diversions that reaching any destination unhindered feels like a win.
All the obstacles along our roads make me feel like real-life Mario Kart. I seldom play that car racing videogame, because I’m far more likely to plummet over a cliff than collect gold coins. By the same token, I avoid the dodgems at Hawkesbury Show: they fill me with a sense of impending doom.
My father tells me that councils rush to finish highway repairs by the end of each financial year to avoid losing funding the following year. In that case, this rash of roadworks ought to disappear overnight on 5th April. I was just wondering what they’d do with all the surplus traffic cones on 6th April, when I discovered a new and appealing use currently popular in San Francisco, where driverless cars are now commonplace.
Local residents of the Californian city don’t believe the motor industry’s hype that “robo-taxis” are safer than cars driven by humans. They cite alarming incidents of them stopping outside fire stations blocking fire engines on calls, or not stopping when they should do and crashing into the backs of buses.
You can’t reason with a robo-taxi, but if you place a traffic cone on its bonnet, it will grind to a halt.
It’s the high-tech equivalent of making a budgie think it’s night-time by covering its cage with a tea-towel. For as long as the traffic cone is on its bonnet, a robo-taxi will refuse to move, assuming it’s an obstacle in its path. No wonder “coning” is catching on.
Now I can’t help wondering what a San Francisco robo-taxi would make of our potholed country lanes.
Remarkable Car Journeys in My Books
- In Murder in the Highlands, set in Scotland, Sophie and Hector are pursued on their motorway by a mysterious stranger.
- Driven to Murder includes an ill-fated bus journey and a car chase through Cotswold country lanes – not built for high speed motoring!
- In Sinister Stranger at St Bride’s, the “stranger” of the title undertakes a risky motorway journey trying to evade detection.
- In Artful Antics at St Bride’s, Gemma’s life is at risk when a local tycoon sends his eccentric chauffeur to collect her from the school.
- In Mrs Morris Changes Lanes, a remarkable car takes Juliet Morris on a life-changing journey, guided by a satnav with a mind of its own.
I won’t say more than that for fear of spoiling the plots, but I hope you’ll want to read them all to share the various rides!
All my novels are available as ebooks, paperbacks, hardbacks and audiobooks.
The novella Mrs Morris Changes Lanes is available in ebook and paperback.
