I had a very interesting discussion about the incident earlier this week. The discussion moved between items like ‘when do the police decide to pursue?’ ‘Who makes the decision to begin the pursuit, who makes the decision to stop?’ And an interesting line I had never before considered was put forward, namely, that the ones pursuing may be little older than the one being pursued and does this construct a lethal mix? We discussed ways of changing the law so that fast cars could not be purchased by individuals under a certain age (we never decided what age?) There was talk of the lethal mix of alcohol and fast cars; of “showing off” to gain attention! (To my knowledge there was no mention of alcohol being involved). Then I got all psychological about young people having no real sense of mortality (one of the key signs of mid-life!). The sense of “it can’t/won’t happen to me.”

Valuable as the discussion was I returned home with a FIF (funny internal feeling), and just as I was climbing into bed it dawned on me that neither of us had made any mention of the fact that a life had been lost! The one, cruel fact that we did know was that a young life had ended. And that fact has immediate impact and consequences for family, relations, friends, workmates and any others who had any connection with this young man.

May he know the mercy of God.

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