Death remains active beyond the Washington crash – but nobody’s horrified

It’s strange the things we mourn.  The collision of that Black Hawk helicopter with a passenger plane over the Potomac River in Washington DC has grabbed the headlines.  News bulletins provided the detail, politicians expressed grief, Donald Trump assigned the blame to those who encouraged ‘diversity’ in the work place. It’d be easy to take sides; certainly the darkness and freezing temperatures and the loss of 67 lives, among them young skaters and their families haunt the mind.

Which is indeed strange, because on the day of the plane-helicopter crash, over 161 people in the  US died in vehicle collisions on US highways. That’s well over twice as many deaths on the roads as over the Potomac that dark night. Each dead person would, just like in the air crash, leave behind grieving relatives, stricken with sorrow at the sudden loss of their loved one. And remember, that is happening every day in the US.

In Ireland,of course, there are fewer deaths each year, because we’re a smaller country with fewer vehicles.  In 2024, we had  242 people killed on our roads, north and south. That’s more than four people dying behind the wheel each week. 

If I told you there was an anonymous gunman who would each week kill at least four people, you’d be horrified, demand that the police track him down, stop the carnage.  But those who die on the roads each week die just as surely as having a bullet put in their head and their lives ended.

Future generations will look back on us and wonder what madness possessed us that we didn’t find a way to stop the road carnage. As I type these words,  there are at least four people in Ireland who, unknown to themselves, will die over the coming week.

When will we escape this  carnage?