We don't have any motorways around here, but we do have accidents. Fatals are always a pest because the police shut off the road for ages while they measure and the only way round, if such there be, take 30-50 miles. We have stretches of straightish 2 lane A-roads mixed with blind corners and blind summits - or both together.
You hear about crashes and tut without thinking much more about it.
What happens if one of the parties involved is someone you've known for years?
Imagine a small peugeot coming along a narrow stretch of road when it meets a large subaru head on. The driver of the peugeot is killed and his passenger has an assortment of broken bones. They might as well have hit a tank.
Suppose it had been you in the peugeot - if I'd been that driver it wouldn't have been a tragedy as long as I was killed outright - I've had my allotted span. But a friend of my daughter's had a similar crash a year ago. After sundry operations and re-breaking bones she can only just struggle along with two sticks. I'm too old to put up with that.
If it had one on my children or grandchildren I'd shattered, griefstruck, angry and all the rest.
But how about the the driver of the subaru, whose fault it was. He was never a patient driver and once too often he passed when he had no way of knowing that the road was clear. So he killed a man.
His situation doesn't bear contemplating. It doesn't matter what penalties the law imposes on him, the guilt will stay forever (he's not the kind of man to shrug off such an accident as a bit of bad luck)
It reminds of me some far off transgression of my childhood, what is was, I don't remember. But I do remember a sickness of guilt, of wishing that day could begin again to wipe out whatever I had done wrong.
I had not killed a man. How does one live with that?