One Moment In Time: Cyclist death

One and one half seconds. This was the record time that should, according to a colleague of mine on a university magazine which had a well-deserved and highly-merited reputation for being extraordinarily tasteless, have gone into the Guinness Book Of Records for the quickest time for a death to occur.

Ross McWhirter, he of the GBOR, would have been the holder of this record as a consequence of his unfortunate encounter with a Provisional IRA bullet. One and one half seconds was possibly a bit on the long side. It certainly doesn't only take a minute, it takes far, far less. A moment, but defining a moment in precisely temporal terms isn't easy.

How long did it take between being propelled off a bike by a car that had apparently been zig-zagging across a Mallorcan road to colliding with a tree and being killed? A moment. Really not very long at all. Slightly less time perhaps than it took for someone to be knocked ten metres by an out-of-control car before coming to rest. Permanently. But the time for death to occur was, in all likelihood, incalculable, as you can't calculate instant. It is a moment in time, and at precisely this moment in time, time stops.

Fragility of life and all that, but once you've been hammered against a tree, there isn't much opportunity to contemplate this. Indeed, there is no opportunity. Though for those left behind, there are plenty of opportunities, and one of those who has the opportunity is an officer with the National Police.

There you are, driving along on a sunny Sunday morning, not a care in the world and well over the legal alcohol limit (no allegedly; fact). What a lovely morning. And then. It only takes a moment, and lives are turned upside down or terminated. There you are, cycling along on a sunny Sunday morning and suddenly an unmarked police car smashes into you. The end. And all over in a moment.

It wasn't a bad morning, weather-wise, that Saturday when someone was taking a stroll in Puerto Alcúdia, thinking of ... . Thinking of what, do you suppose? What do you think of just before a car using the Bellevue mile as a race track hurtles in your general direction just prior to ending all further thoughts? One moment. That's all it takes. Not even necessarily one and one half seconds.

The two incidents paint a bad picture of Mallorcan roads. Of drunk and/or drugs-influenced drivers ending lives in an instant (and how coincidentally ironic that a police inspector with the anti-drugs unit should be involved). Yet, things aren't as bad as they once were. Nothing like. Time was, and not so long ago, that every time you ventured onto the roads, chances were you would be involved in an accident, just miss one or witness one. Things are a hell of a lot better.

But the involvement of a police inspector is about as bad as it gets in terms of generating negative publicity. And in Germany, that negative publicity is being given an airing. "Bild" needs little incentive to sensationalise anything, especially if it happens in Mallorca (and for the Germans, the island is referred to as the "paradise" island). It was "Bild" that tried to attach blame for bird-flu deaths in Germany to Playa de Palma. Now it runs a headline of "Drunk cop rammed German woman off the road". It suggests that the cop in question, i.e. the inspector, had been previously warned as to his drinking, though it is now known that the inspector was not driving the car at the time of the accident.

Embarrassment for the police and for Mallorca is too mild a word. Yes, bad things happen, but a combination of drunk cops and a dead cyclist of pensionable age is the last thing Mallorca needs as part of its cycling tourism ambitions.

It is a sobering thought, or should be, that it only takes a moment, a moment that is indefinable because of its instantaneousness, for it to all end or for an action to be performed by someone that deprives him of being able to drive along without a care in the world because that one moment might result in ten years imprisonment. One moment. Gone. It is a thought that everyone should carry in their heads, but of course it is too much to ask, though it might be one that everyone would have were they to see the photo of the dead woman's husband, prostrated, bereft, next to her bagged-up body.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.