蜜芽传媒

Every year at my church, we hold a service for Londoners who have been killed or injured on the city鈥檚 roads. It鈥檚 an international day of remembrance begun by the charity RoadPeace, now adopted by the United Nations, and it happened this week. It happened this week on the same day as the terrible news broke of the death of five teenagers in a crash in South Yorkshire. The very first national service held for road crash victims in the UK was in 1993 in Coventry and included a remarkable sculpture of the head of Christ made from the twisted metal of a crashed car. The identification of Christ with the victim and violence of a crash was poignant and spiritually provoking. There are as many reasons for road crashes as there are incidents; campaigners, local councillors, emergency service personnel and national politicians engage together in the ongoing debates about reducing road danger and improving post 鈥揷rash investigations. But just as powerful as the legal and political arrangements that govern our behaviour on the roads are the cultural assumptions we have, our emotional engagement with our cars and the social consensus around what is or not acceptable.

When I was growing up, government advertisements encouraged us to wear our seatbelts. Then to 鈥渢hink before you drink before you drive鈥�. This is now assumed behaviour for the vast majority. Now we鈥檙e reminded that the speed limit is just that 鈥� a limit 鈥� not a target; that twenty is plenty and that we could, just, slow down. Although the debates must be pragmatic, they also raise deeper spiritual questions for us as a society about our valuing of autonomy, personal space, control and, yes, speed 鈥� as signifiers of power and worth. Many of us are at different times, every kind of road user 鈥� including pedestrians and cyclists -but the cultural meaning of the car leaves us wanting an environment where as drivers we feel invincible, we choose the music we want, the angle of the seat, the hands free ability to chat to our friends. Making cars comfortable is not a crime; but in what feels like the warm security of our car, the cold truth is that we are totally and solely responsible for the way we drive.

And the testimony of the families who came to our church to remember their dead, and that of the drivers whose imaginations will be forever haunted by what they鈥檝e done, is quite simply; the need for speed isn鈥檛 worth it.