13th January 2021

I’ve been thinking about roads recently. Much of the freedom I have enjoyed over my lifetime has been because of roads. I started driving in the 1970s and over ensuing years travelled widely in these islands. Before that I rode my bike extensively with friends. More recently I have been fortunate to travel across the world – everywhere there are roads.

Roads are, of course, a mixed blessing. Recently concerns about air pollution near to main roads has been mounting and although I’m still a keen motorist I’m not quite so much of a ‘petrol head’ as I would have been at one time…

Still, as long as I obeyed ‘the rules of the road’ I was free, but I’ve come to realise that all that freedom depended on: generations of people who built the roads and those who maintain them; others who decide on how they can and can’t be used; the consensual agreement of all road users (barring accidents of which, thankfully, I have seen few); the freedom of travel – no one (except at European borders once upon a time – and again, it seems… but that’s another story) has ever stopped me and asked me where I’m going.

So much freedom, and so many people involved in providing it and maintaining it and controlling it – all for the common good. The world – our world – depends on such infrastructure – roads, railways, airways, libraries, hospitals, schools and colleges, TV stations, supermarkets… the list is long. Perhaps we should think of the Internet – Twitter, Facebook, Google and all the rest – as being on that list…

Michael Docker