She loved a number.

In January 2014 alone, there were 23 people killed on Irish roads. That's 23 lives cut short. That’s also 23 families destroyed, 23 people left without a best friend and some children left without a parent. 

It's easy to look at the number 23 and see nothing but a number. But when you know one of those ‘numbers’ you’d do anything to bring them back.  I always felt for those who knew victims of road accidents but it wasn't until this year that I truly felt the devastating effect it has on people. 

​When I felt my friend's shoulders shaking in my arms as she wept I realised exactly how real every single one of those numbers are. She loved a number, her friend had died on our roads,a young man's life cut short.  She was in shock, we were all in shock. His family has been shook forever. They'll learn to live with it in time but they'll never get over it, nobody ever does.  

She cried, I cried, a lot of people cried. A lot of people will continue to cry. At first in public, at wakes and funerals. Then in private, every day. With time they'll become less frequent, but tears will always fall for him, at Christmas later this year and at family weddings 20 years from now. As long as people who loved him live, tears will always fall for him. He may be down in the death records as just another number, but it’s not just his life that’s over.

We all know how important road safety is but I don't think we truly realise it until we are effected by it. When it happens, when someone you know or  loved, is needlessly killed on the road you want everything to change. Your first extinct is that all cars should be taken off the road, forever. With time, you realise this is unrealistic so you move on to the roads. You want every single road in the country to be rebuilt, twice as wide, as straight and as safe. Then you want the speed to be gone. You want every car to be replaced with new, slower ones that cannot go any faster than 50kmh. Unfortunately, very few of these things can or will happen realistically. You know that after this tragedy that you will always drive carefully, never testing limits, be it those of speed or alcohol levels in blood. But you know that the tragedy that has effected you will not affect everyone. The day after your loved one dies, people will still get into their cars and drive too quickly and people will still drive their cars after drinking. There will be days when you'll want everyone to experience the tragedy of someone they know or love dying on the roads. You know that if everyone loses someone they love then chances are that we'll all drive carefully.

When someone dies on the road, there is no time to prepare. Yes, you can comfort yourself that they didn't have to suffer a sickness but you can also tear yourself apart with the fact that if they hadn't gotten in that car, they'd still be here. It is an extremely hard situation to find comfort in. You can only hope that your loved one is one of the lucky ones who is killed instantly instead of suffering for hours. Someone has to identify the body. Someone has to see their loved one in an sometimes unrecognisable state, something that you wouldn't wish on our worst enemy.