On Thursday evening, a retired solicitor
called Don Lock was driving along the A24 near Worthing in West Sussex when he
had a minor bump in his car, running into the vehicle in front of him. An
everyday occurrence.
What followed was not.
When the 79-year-old great-grandfather got
out of his car, the driver of the car he’d hit stabbed him repeatedly. Despite
the attempts of attending paramedics, Mr Lock died at the scene.
Up to that point, Don Lock must have felt
life was smiling on him. He had just celebrated 55 years of marriage, had
recently been given the all-clear after a cancer diagnosis, was fit enough to
be cycling up to 150 miles a week, and was looking forward to the birth of his
sixth great-grandchild later this year.
The man who stabbed him to death jumped
back into his car and fled the scene. A theory was voiced that he may have been
excessively angered by the collision because the car Mr Lock hit was a classic.
Armed police arrested a suspect nearby and
have until midnight on Sunday to question him. Time will tell if they have the
right man or not, but reports suggest they “are not looking for anyone else” in
connection with the crime.
People living nearby have expressed their
shock at the incident., not least because the area in which is happened is
“quiet and picturesque.”
Sadly, road rage is not unusual at all in
the UK. I’m ashamed to report that we are world leaders when it comes to this
particular modern menace, with more than 80% of drivers claiming to have
experienced it at some point or another.
Nine out of ten drivers in the UK claimed
to have been a victim of road rage at least once, while 20% claimed to have
been the victim on more than ten occasions. A disappointing 70% admitted
committing it themselves.
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| Kenneth Noye (left) who was convicted of the 1996 murder of Stephen Cameron in a road rage incident on the M25 |
Incidents range from gesturing and verbal
abuse to violent assault, although fortunately murders seem to be rare. One in
7 claimed the aggressor had got out of their own vehicle to verbally or
physically abuse them. Only 7% reported any incident to the police.
In a survey conducted by one of the
motoring magazines of readers typically aged between 16 and 30, it was found
that the worst time was afternoon or evening, and the worst place to be was a
town in the south-east.
The usual scapegoat for bad driving in the
UK – White Van Man – was cited in 13% of incidents.
It all makes you think twice before you
gesture rudely to some tosser who’s just cut you up on the motorway or pulled
out in front of you. I’ve taken to simply giving them a broad smile and a wave
– it confuses them no end!
On a slightly different note, the lovely Sarah Ward –
reviewer extraordinaire whose debut novel, IN
BITTER CHILL just came out – invited me to take part this week in an event
for the Buxton Fringe, a new part of the Buxton Festival.
The
event was held in the village hall at Chelmorton, and as well as myself there
was Steven Dunne, Keith Nixon and Chris Simms in attendance. Some great
questions, some happy readers buying books, and even a glass of wine to
celebrate Sarah’s fledgling literary career. Who can argue with that?
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| (l to r) Sarah Ward, Steven Dunne, Keith Nixon, Chris Simms, Zoë Sharp at Chelmorton village hall |
This week’s Word of the Week is biblioclasm, meaning the destroying of
books or other written material, particularly the Bible. Or, alternatively, you
could have libricide, which also
means the destruction of books. Somehow, the former suggests a catastrophic
disaster in which every book meets its maker, while in the latter a single
library perishes.
