I had a great couple of days traveling around Donegal on the bike last weekend. The weather was just perfect for it with beautiful scenery and (surprisingly) excellent roads!
We left Skerries at 2:00 on Friday and by late afternoon were making our way from Letterkenny back along the R245 to Downings. We spent the following day heading west through Creeslough and around into Gortahork before navigating back through various back roads.
Try as I might though, I couldn't shake a sense of unease on the road. It wasn't the riding conditions (which were perfect) or the bike I was on. It was something altogether more innocuous that had me worried and that was the frightening number of black circles that I came across burned into the tar-macadam of the road.
I counted 47 examples within an hour before giving up and it prompted me to wonder if this is something peculiar to Donegal or is it a nationwide problem?
Lack of Recreational Activities?
One contributor who answered a post I put on boards.ie had this to say;
"It's a nationwide problem, especially in rural Areas. I think part of the problem is that for young men there is Sweet F.A to do out there in terms of recreation (Unless you like GAA).
So at night time and on the weekends where as most of the people that live in built up areas would go to town/do something adventurous/partake in some recreation activity, the people that live in the middle of nowhere have nothing to do so they (especially young men) will go out in the car for a drive. And being young men they like sports cars (I know, I am a young man and I LOVE sports cars) and the messing starts..."
National Problem?
Rather than just huff and puff about it, I thought I'd keep a record of any examples found by Motorcheck.ie visitors on the road. Perhaps if we were able to identify a concentration of activity we could address the recreational problem before we start to find something altogether more tragic on the road than tyre marks?
Have You Seen Any Examples Locally?
If you know of any 'hot-spots' locally let us know about them below and we'll add them to our map above. Pictures / Video of the markings would be useful too as they tend to bring home the gravity of the problem.
View Black Circles in a larger map