Saturday 12 May 2018

Someone smashed into the gate

at the playground the night before last. I saw the damage as I was going to do some essential shopping.
It isn't just any gate. It is a memorial gate to the person who donated the land for the playground. Repairing it is something which is  unlikely to happen. The damage is too bad for that. The council will need to build a new gate.
Yes, they need the gate. It keeps small children safely inside the playground. The gate and the arch which surrounds it were in danger of falling on someone - particularly if a child tried to swing on it, as children are apt to do.
Someone who lives close to the playground was taking photographs of the damage and told me,
    "I heard the bang about 8:30 last night. Apparently the driver was drunk. He tried to drive off. A couple of young men across the road held him until the police arrived."
Put like that it sounds relatively simple but there was no sign of council activity in mid-morning so I hurried home and sent an urgent email knowing who would be monitoring their mail that morning and they needed to have it "in writing". I was about to pick up the phone and follow it with a quick call when a reply came back thanking me and saying they would deal with it - immediately.
It actually took a couple of hours for them to get around to it. Going back to the Post Office because the Senior Cat had forgotten a bill he needed to pay straight away I saw eight council workers "on the job". Well, two of them were doing the work. The other six were standing there. 
At least that was being dealt with but I  thought about all the other problems this "accident" will cause. There is the police time, the court time, the council time and more time in other places. The man who drove into the gate will lose his licence (if he had one).He has written off his  car (if it is his). He has no insurance cover (if he had any in the first place) because he was inebriated. He is liable to pay for the damage and the cost of repairs. All that simply assumes he has no prior convictions which could lead to even harsher penalties.
I know nothing about the incident but I do know it would be wrong to call it an "accident". Getting behind the wheel of a car in the state he was allegedly in is still a deliberate choice, the wrong choice. 
It is all too likely that the cost of the damage will be borne by someone else, in this case the ratepayers, because few people have the resources to pay out thousands upon thousands of dollars for that sort of idiocy.
And the other thing which worries me is the effect on the  children who use the playground. They will learn what has happened and more than one of them will wonder,
     "What if I had been swinging on the gate when the car hit it?"

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