Being stopped on the motorway is the most cruel and unnatural of things

IT WAS one of those inexplicable traffic jams. A traffic jam coming out of Dublin, writes Colm O’Regan. 

In theory everyone should have been galloping out of the city with giddy abandon like young calves gambolling in a spring meadow, delighted at being free from the dungy-strawed shed that is the capital.

But it wasn’t. With the whole of the country to fan out into, we still all got stuck somewhere around the first stubbled barley fields of West Dublin. Craning our neck, or sometimes craning the car’s neck, to see what the hold-up is. Furious. We are probably victims of a ripple effect somewhere up along the road. A truck-driver, unhappy at not being able to do 60 miles an hour, taking 14 miles to overtake another truck-driver who was doing 59. Someone behind taps on the brakes. The person behind them presses the brakes for 10% longer. It propagates so much back along the road that where I am, we could all get out and have a sing-song and share stories about the old days.

No doubt some drivers are glaring at their passengers saying “you see. I knew we should have left earlier but oh no. You had to ‘go to the toilet’ or ‘rescue that man from a burning building’.”

Being stopped on the motorway is the most cruel and unnatural of things. The speed camera sign seems to taunt you. You shout “no fear of that” back to it. Everyone else gets on with their lives just a few short feet away in the opposite lane. You try to change lane to gain 13ft of an advantage, only to be passed out by a fox.

Beating the traffic: For some it’s one of the major life goals. You see examples of it everywhere. Fans of victorious All-Ireland-winning teams, being dragged by the father out of it lest he be confronted with his worst fear — inching along in first gear, thinking about the diesel leaking out as if it were coins falling out of his pocket.

But could this huge part of human existence be about to change? Last week’s web summit in Lisbon — also known as the Oh No That’s Fine, Gwan Away. We’ll Be Fine Here (hope ye choke on the wifi and the efficient public transport) Summit — Nissan Motor president Carlos Ghosn said that widespread use of driverless cars was only a few years away and that the most exciting thing about them was the two hours we will gain back every day as commuters.

This would be the single biggest lodgment back into the human time-bank since the invention of the babysitter. We will no longer need to beat the traffic. Traffic will become immaterial. You’ll be stuck at the giant road-mark ball just before Naas and you won’t care. What will that mean to people who have spent a lifetime passive aggressively jangling keys at family members who “picked now to go looking for the shoes to bring back to Penneys when they had all day to do it”? What will people smalltalk about at weddings if no one cares how you got there because it was the car did all the work.

Will AA Roadwatch as we know it end? No longer will it be a centre of research for vowel-movements. They’ll probably just send the info directly to the car. You won’t be able to use the Irish “I’m five minutes away” when you mean “I’ve just woken up”. You’ll just video-conference call in from your car, your children watching your boss disbelieve you as you give your status update for the project that’s late. What will we do with the extra hours?

Probably spend more time liking and sharing links on Facebook for a chance to win a Christmas hamper.