Chop chop whizz whizz corre corre

I confess. Once upon a distant time I was a hopeless speed freak. I used to test high performance cars for a living, flying all over the world to hurtle round racetracks, skid and slide along rally stages, thunder down German autobahns and generally push the limits.

There was the adrenalin rush of snow and water too. I skied the black run Swizz Wall in Avoriaz which has health warnings at the top and is so steep and vast you can't see what lies ahead. I crewed on a racing yacht, punching through storms day and night, dodging super-tankers, ferries, trawlers and one alarming submarine which suddenly surfaced beside us. I even played a minor part in a tilt at the world speed sailing record, but we only managed to get up to 80 kilometres per hour. The record now stands at a knee-knocking 121 kph.

The key word in the first sentence was hopeless. Maybe that is a bit too damning, but I was never accomplished. All the competitive car events, despite personal tuition by former Formula 1 world champion Jackie Stewart, came to nought. We never won an offshore sailing race. I survived The Swiss Wall by sheer good fortune. As for the submarine.....

But that was then, when I thought I was indestructible and a few of us were given the chance to test that theory. I conformed to a few basic safety rules, survived and eased off the accelerator 20 years ago.

The truth is it was a much slower world in the Eighties and early Nineties, so much so that what I once considered daringly brisk now causes my 15-year-old to break out in a fit of yawning.

Now the urge to rush, risk and ludicrous spectacle is a pandemic. YouTube is loaded with extreme sports nuts defying the laws of gravity, computer games seemed to have acquired the same compulsive extremism, super-cars will soon arrive at their destinations before they have set off, and a stupid number of people behind the wheel of the swift family transport show a stunning disregard for the simple laws of physics.

Two of those basic safety rules I referred to that kept me safe were car control and distance. Fast is fine if the laws, conditions and traffic dictate it to be so, or if you are on a race circuit. If not, and you persist, you are an utter berk, an accident waiting to happen.

The modern condition of breathless rush, the consequence of the unsustainable pace of life in general, manifests itself in its ugliest and most dangerous form on our roads, where bullying, tailgating and reckless overtaking are shockingly, stupidly prevalent.

It is a kind of madness that can afflict the mildest of either sex. In the numbing, cocooning comfort of a modern car you could so easily be in an armchair playing a video game. Well you are not. You may feel safe. You are not. There is a dire need to shake people out of this stupor of mindless risk-taking.

Just back off. It is better to arrive than to never arrive at all.