Uncharitable thoughts
It's nearly 8 pm. I'm sat at my computer, in my bedroom. The TV is quietly burbling to itself in the corner. All is peaceful then? No! no! no! Above everything else I can hear the extremely annoying sound of small motorcycles being ridden up and down the roads around my house. The fact that it's dark and these bikes don't have lights and they are so low to the ground that car drivers will have trouble seeing them doesn't seem to bother the riders, nor the police.
We've had problems with youths riding old motor bikes and scooters for years, but after Christmas last year, the mini bikes and quad bikes appeared in numbers. Again, the fact that riding these bikes on the public highway is illegal doesn't seem to impress the riders nor their doting parents who buy them the machines. I first reported the problem to the police when my daughter very nearly ran one of them down. I've sent e-mails, with and without photos and telephoned many times. The police response has been 1 telephone call from a very nice young constable who, very apologetically told me that the police were powerless to stop these kids from riding around illegally, mainly because they always denied ownership of the bike and the police therefore couldn't confiscate it if they couldn't prove ownership. He mentioned one of the local youths who had been stopped 15 times and been banned from driving more than once. Of course he never actually had a driving licence so "depriving" him of it is, in fact, pretty pointless.
So that's that. These kids are literally riding roughshod over the law and the law "can do nothing." I strongly suspect that the police will only take action when one of these kids is either killed or injured after a collision with a legitimate road user. The trouble is, the car driver will probably be prosecuted for manslaughter knowing the foibles of the Crown Prosecution Service.
My question is, am I being uncharitable in hoping that it happens soon?
posted by Eddie @ 8:15 pm
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