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My fear of car accidents is at an all-time high, but if I wish to visit my mother in Dorset then a trip on the M27 is an unfortunate pre-requisite. I have been travelling the same route for nearly 18 years and for the first time this weekend, as I put my daughter in the car for the journey home, I felt genuine trepidation and anxiety. As it turned out, it was for good reason.
When we left my mother's cosy rural house on Sunday afternoon the weather was closing in, offering low level cloud and a continual mist of persistent drizzle on the windscreen. I had hoped to have a good hour of daylight left to do the two and a bit hour journey in, but as we neared the short stretch of motorway that cuts across the south of England from Southampton to Portsmouth the weather worsened and we were enveloped in darkness.
We had been driving for an hour in heavy traffic before embarking on the motorway portion of the journey and I was expecting delays as we neared roadworks. But within minutes of starting on the motorway we were at a standstill, and, as the signs still indicated we were two miles form the associated speed restriction zone, I gathered that all could not possibly be well up ahead.
We had crawled for about ten minutes when the first fire engine barged its way up the middle lane - blue lights flashing, sirens blaring sending confused drivers veering in higgledy-piggledy directions all over the carriageway. It was swiftly followed by another, and an ambulance, a traffic officer's vehicle, and another ambulance. Each time I spied the blue flashing lights in my wing mirrors, my ten-year-old daughter and I, who were sitting patiently in the middle lane, had to decide which way the vehicle was scything its way through the traffic and try to manoeuvre accordingly out of its way, as safely as we could.
My daughter was becoming increasingly agitated by all the lights, noise and commotion, and as we neared the scene of the accident she could see the mass of flashing blue bulbs at the site ahead. She was so distressed that she had started shaking uncontrollably and was crying quite openly as the vehicles involved in the car accident became visible. I told her to shut her eyes as we passed by and I tried desperately not to rubber-neck. The emergency rescue officers were in the middle of the road and the now one lane of traffic had to edge past them, almost scraping the central barrier as we went by.
To my left, a couple were bent over someone in the road. I tried only to look ahead and drive past as quickly and safely as I could, whilst reassuring my daughter that we were safe and that everything would be OK; that the people in the car accident were being looked after.
Suddenly, after the chaos of the incident, we were on an open road with only a few of the likewise held up vehicles in front of us. The drizzle seemed to stop and it was a serene moment as I slowly accelerated to a sedate 65 miles per hour. I had no desire to speed on my way, I just wanted to comfort my daughter and get home safely to my other loved ones waiting patiently at home for our return.
And within minutes, at the next merging of traffic, a car sped up behind me, coming to within inches of my rear bumper as I overtook a middle lane hogger doing 60. I was incandescent with rage as I let the idiot pass me a few moments later having safely pulled back in to the middle lane. Didn't he realise we had just witnessed something awful; couldn't he see how stupid his behaviour was?
And that was when it struck me; no amount of shock tactics will get through to the dangerous drivers out there, no amount of road safety campaigning, or media reporting. They think they are immune, they think they are unstoppable; they think they will always get away with it.
But having Googled "M27 car crash" this morning, to ascertain how the incident occurred, I saw that there have been quite a few other accidents recently in the area on that short stretch of road: 30th October a man was seriously injured in M27 nine vehicle pile up, 3rd November - woman loses control of her car and crashes into central reservation, 12th November motorcyclist killed just off M27 junction.
On the day we travelled to my mother's an accident had happened eastbound at 3.20pm involving three vehicles and we were held up at about 6.30pm heading in the other direction by what looked like a fairly minor incident.
In December last year, my partner and I were returning from Gloucester and had just joined the M27 from the M3 heading for Portsmouth when we came upon an accident literally seconds after it took place. A car was crashed into the central reservation, another was badly mangled on the side of the carriageway and people were trying to run into the road, despite fast moving traffic happening upon the scene including myself as I tried to manoeuvre past the debris.
Is it any wonder then, as I pack my beloved children and partner into the passenger seats beside me and embark on any motorway journey, that a chill of anticipation runs though my body with advancing dread.
If we had left a little earlier this Sunday, or, in December, if we hadn't been caught by the lights after exiting the M4, would we have been involved? It doesn't bear thinking about, but try as I might, as I read and write about car accident upon car accident for my personal injury work, I wonder, why do I trust the lives of myself and my family to this car accident mayhem that is Great Britain's roads?
