Never mind, we always have plenty of insurance, and we all wear seat belts so there’s really not much danger. That seems satisfactory and insurers receive many strange explanations from miscreant drivers. The innocent victims of their stupidity rarely receive adequate compensation, but then that’s a risk we all take. The driver can always say; I started to slow down but the traffic was more stationary than I thought. Or plead they didn't think the speed limit applied after midnight or say they collided with a stationary truck coming the other way. If asked if either driver have done anything to avoid the accident? The obvious answer is to have travelled by bus, or not to have travelled at all.

That’s the problem with our age. We shall be known by future generations as the travellers, and yet how often do we question the logic of journeys. Salesmen travel all over the country, driving fast with one ear glued to a mobile phone, when most of that business could have been completed on the telephone, or by mail, or even through the Internet. Families split up, and move all over the world, breaking up the intimate linkages that should cement our society together. Globalisation is a very dirty word.

Sometime we can be excused. One driver wrote on his claim form, “I started to turn and it was at this point I noticed a camel and an elephant tethered at the verge. This distraction caused me to lose concentration and hit a bollard.” An acceptable excuse perhaps. Imagine yourself as the claims assessor, how would you feel about, "I was going at about 70 or 80 mph when my girlfriend on the pillion reached over and grabbed my testicles so I lost control." Or, “the car in front hit the pedestrian but he got up so I hit him again.” A chauvinist may find, “I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment.” Acceptable. There is less sympathy for the lame, “The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intention.” The vaguely sadistic “A pedestrian hit me and went under my car” and, “in an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.” Or “to avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front I struck the pedestrian.”

The ability to sit in our own metal box, isolated from the rest of the world, is no longer considered a luxury. In many parts of the world public transport systems have been allowed to fall into decay, as the twin snakes, one red the other white, weave their evil ways across our globe.

If we are to allow the impoverished access to such delights we will mean much more than one world. Perhaps it is time to infect Mars with life? It has water, and most of the attributes we consider desirable. Given a little time and ingenuity; from both man and nature, it may become the next suitable haven.