Praying for road safety

• MY suggestion in these pages a few weeks ago that the Christian churches ought to establish a “bishop of road safety”, whose job it would be to look at life and death on our roads, has produced some interesting responses.

He or she should become a bishop of road danger reduction. Road safety tends to emphasise pedestrians getting out of the way, while road danger reduction focuses on the behaviour of motorists and motorcyclists.

The bishop would need to take up such themes as injustice, indifference, and bereavement. Other challenges would include how we define the word “accident” in motoring terms.

Then there is the difference between “careless” and “dangerous” driving and how a killer-driver can be labelled as having a “good character”, and then entitled to lesser punishment.

The bishop could recommend that vehicles should be fitted with speed limiters, thereby greatly reducing the number of A&E cases as well as deaths and injuries to animals.

With the Christian church leaders now having practically exhausted the topics of gender and sexuality, they need to start exploring and overseeing the more important areas of modern life, notably how to create safer roads.

ANTONY PORTER, W9