www.tanstaafl.co.uk

That’s really no joke. I’d guess over the last five years there have been increasing numbers of accidents and other events that resulted in the motorway being closed in at last one direction to the point where three or four a week in just this county no longer seems like a surprise.

Granted some incidents have been down to people wandering into the road and suchlike (I’ll come back to that in a moment), but the rest mostly seem to be down to people who just can’t bloody drive safely. It’s shocking. And in fact it’s now so bad that the County Gazette website is split into the sections News, Sport, M5, …

I’ve read that whilst Somerset contains less than 13% of the motorway network in the south west, almost a third of incidents involving “people in crisis” happen there. I don’t think they can be blamed for that. If someone is attempting to jump off a motorway bridge they’re clearly not in a state to do their best thinking. They’re hardly responsible for several incidents a week, either.

I was actually planning to use the M5 this coming weekend, but given the fact that it’s a Bank Holiday weekend, I think I’ll pass. Unfortunately delaying my journey means I’m likely to get caught up in three year’s worth of roadworks planned to start on 1st September.

And here’s the strangest thing… In a recent survey, the M5 was voted one of the best roads in the country.

But for some reason I just can’t manage to take it seriously.

I keep having visions of dogs being pawprinted (after the police had been chasing up leads, obviously) and getting dragged up from the cells into court to face charges. The judge or jury, or possibly both, would all be cats. The guilty dog would then be sent down to do a serious stretch of kibble.