On a lonely Inishowen road in July 2010, only the driver survived of eight young men packed into a single car. The oldest was 23. The eighth fatality was Hugh Friel, a kindly 66-year-old farmer driving home from bingo. At Friel’s funeral in Clonmany, Fr Fintan Diggin reflected on the huge cultural change since he first arrived in the traditional fishing community. Where many of the houses then had displayed mementoes of loved ones lost at sea, that had changed to the loss of life on land, “and we are left with despair, tragedy and suffering”.

The other seven funerals sketched pictures of exuberant young lads, full of craic and wild for cars, who believed themselves invincible. Symbols of their lives laid at the altar included a car-racing magazine, a photograph of an old, souped-up BMW and a 2010 “driver of the year” trophy.

After a decade of cataclysmic losses, underscored by huge public concern about end-of-life bangers being routinely sold to underage boys, it felt like an inflection point. The past weekend – which saw the extinction of five teenage lives in a BMW being driven the wrong way down a motorway causing serious injuries to three sisters and a little boy – may have been another.

Common threads remain. In the 2000s gardaí were privately expressing deep frustration at a lack of co-operation from parents, who in........

© The Irish Times