Car-nage in Bristol

Police are hunting the driver of a car which mounted a pavement and killed an 11-year-old as he walked home from a church youth meeting.

What didn’t make headlines is the earlier case: The crash is the second hit-and-run in a week in Bristol. Last Friday Troy Atkinson, of Hartcliffe, was knocked over in the city centre and died hours later in Frenchay Hospital.

Blogger Bristol Traffic has been to the crash sites and also brings news of a third hit and run in Bristol. See the reports and photographs here, here and here.

Needless to say these deaths have not provoked a national moral panic. No politician has demanded urgent action to crack down on drivers who ‘lose control’ of vehicles expressly designed to break the national maximum speed limit. No one links these acts of violence to the enormous reduction in road traffic police.

And even if the two hit and run drivers involved in the Bristol killings are traced, prosecuted and convicted, you can be quite sure that in a few years time they will be back behind the wheel of a car. The right to drive is the most important human right that civilisation knows.