Crash

There's an election coming soon and it could be significant, not only for the voters themselves of course, but the world. We are in volatile and chaotic times, the climate catastrophe is self-evident to anyone whose house has blown down or been flooded, but unfortunately to hardly anyone else; there are sinister billionaires and autocrats creeping up behind us, and trade wars are looming that could bust us back to the 1950s, a time you will probably not remember, and neither don't I, but I've seen enough documentaries to know I don't want to go there.

In such uncertain times one would hope that the electorate in significant countries might choose their leader wisely and that is why one particular election is gripping my attention. Iceland. Put the date in your diary: November 30.

I always think that the character of a nation can be divined by the people's reaction to common occurrences like a road accident. Over the years I've had a few, but no one ever got seriously hurt, fortunately. The nearest I came to real disaster was on a bus in India which was hit by a speeding truck going in the opposite direction. I was asleep, halfway down the vehicle, and by good luck I'd moved into the aisle seat. Suddenly the entire side of the bus was ripped clean off. I found myself on the floor covered in glass with an agonising pain in my right elbow. I think I had smacked it very hard on a metal stanchion, but there was no long-term damage. In fact, we were all lucky: a few nasty cuts and bruises, but no fatalities. The reaction of the passengers, however, was interesting. No one showed any interest in contracting the emergency services, finding medical attention, or even handling the immediate and massive traffic snarl-up. What they wanted was revenge. The lorry driver, however, had already made a run for it, so they turned on the bus driver. Had he fallen asleep? I felt sorry for him: he looked as baffled and shaken up as the rest of us. If not for another bus pulling up and offering to take everyone on, I don't know what might have happened.

In Yemen, a car accident, can get a very different response. In Sana'a one night, driving too fast, I failed to hold a bend and hit a parked taxi, causing a problem with the  driver's door which was slightly open. I caught it with the cow bar on my 4x4, knocking the thing clean off and sending it somersaulting down the street with a deafening barrage of screeches and clanks.

Having stopped, I returned the detached door to the taximan with my sincere regrets. He just waved away my apologies, and started trying to fix it back on. "No problem," he said, "This is Yemen."

Either it wasn't his car, or it was the door's fault - it had been knocked off before. Well, maybe the more realistic answer was that he was driving without any insurance, licence or previous experience of handling a vehicle, and was afraid that a policeman might appear.

That incident had certainly been my fault, but on another occasion I was tootling along a street in my beloved Landcruiser (one of the classic J 40 series featuring a titanic 4.23 litre petrol engine, bench front seat, eyelashes painted on the headlamps, richly-tasselled green velvet dashboard dust protector, and a spare wheel cover adorned with a pair leatherette Kalashnikovs across the Yemeni flag). Suddenly a car came shooting out of a side road and I smacked into the front end, causing serious damage to the other vehicle. There was no need to call the police. The car contained the Chief of Police. I narrowly escaped deportation, after paying for his repairs.

All of these incidents, I think, say something about the societies in which they happened, but it is in Iceland where the drama of a car accident really reveals the true national character.

On the first occasion I drove from the airport in a snowstorm, eventually arriving in a place called Grundarfjördur where the weather deteriorated until the town was cut off. At breakfast on the third morning, the hotel receptionist told me that killer whales had been sighted in the next fjord. All I had to do was get over one mountain pass and I would see them.

"I'm fairly sure the road will have been snow-ploughed, but you'll soon find out..."

I set off in a hurry. The weather had calmed down and a snowplough had indeed been past. Things looked good. When I reached the mountain pass, I got a panoramic view of the next fjord which the road, after a long descent, crossed on a pontoon bridge. Even at that distance I could see the pod of orcas feeding under the bridge. They were snacking on a vast shoal of herring that had got itself hemmed in at the narrowest part of the fjord, precisely where the bridge had been built.

My first thought was: by the time I get down there, it could all be over. My second thought was: get a picture from here. And, as luck would have it, right there next to the snow-covered road was a lay-by: a flat section of pure white snow. No one had pulled in there for a while, there were no tracks, but I did not hesitate. I pulled over.

It was not a lay-by. It was a snowdrift flattened by the winds that had been scouring the pass. The car simply nose-dived off the cliff and sank into deep soft snow.

It was a massive struggle to actually get out the vehicle, then climb a few metres back up to the road. The effort warmed me up, but within seconds of making it on to firm ground, I realised I was underdressed for this situation. No gloves, no hat. This was a major disaster. I was going to die.

I found my phone and rang the hotel, blabbering with panic. "I've crashed the car. I'm freezing. It's so cold. Car's gone down the mountain." That was something of an exaggeration.

"Oh yes. Quite a chilly start today."

This was not the emergency response I wanted. I expected sirens, helicopters and a name check on the midday news.

"I'm at the pass. Please send help."

"At the pass, is it? Any sign of those orcas? Incredible animals. Do you know they live in matrilineal groups? Like us here in Iceland - we have more women in parliament that any other country."

I fought back a raging desire to scream, instead whimpering. "Can you get someone here?"

"Oh yes, we'll fix that. Once I get breakfast finished, I'll give Frederick a ring. He farms up there. Hopefully he's not too busy."

I restrained myself from pointing out that Frederick might be taking a look at my frozen corpse if he didn't hurry up.

Anyway, an hour later, a huge tractor appeared. Frederick climbed down. "Oh you parked it down there?" Chuckle, chuckle. He pulled a huge hawser and hook from the front of the tractor, climbed down into the snow tunnel left by my vehicle, attached it, then reversed the tractor. My car popped out the snow like a champagne cork. Frederick jumped down and tried the ignition. Nothing. He popped the bonnet, attached jump leads, fired me up. "Did you notice, there's orcas down there?"

I did get to the bridge in time to witness the orcas cruising under, gobbling up herring.

I have never known such matter-of-fact, commonsensical approach to a problem. Icelanders just don't 'do' drama. If Shakespeare had been an Icelander, Romeo would not have killed himself on finding Juliet's apparently lifeless body. he'd have borrowed some jump leads.

The next time I crashed in Iceland, I got confirmation of the whole Icelandic attitude to life.

It was in summer and I was driving a 'state-of-the-art' Hyundai 4x4 along a straight section of gravel road. It was in a boggy area so the track was a strip of deep gravel at least a couple of metres high with quite a sharp drop on the edges. The Hyundai had every gadget and gizmo imaginable, including a facility that tweaked the steering when it considered you were veering off-centre. I was trying to switch this off, using a scientific method that I have developed for dealing with complex technology. I jab randomly at all the buttons and screens while shouting rude words. It always works.

The car left the road and grounded on that sharp gravel edge, coming to a halt with the most ear-shattering screech.

I continued jabbing and shouting, but the car had gone into a sulk.

I got out. I rang the hire man. "Don't worry. I'll come."

Every car that passed, stopped. "Can we help?" "Want a lift."  There were thirteen cars before Henrik arrived.

"Haha. You did get it stuck! And this car is a little tricky to pull out. Let me take you to your hotel. They've got a very good natural hot pool. Have a beer and a soak. I'll bring this thing over later."

And that is what happened. When I asked about damage, he waved the question away. "Nothing to worry about."

And so, I have a proposal. Let's put Iceland in charge. No more bouffant-haired buffoons, no more weird laughs, no more dead-eyed driller-killer billionaires. Just Frederick and Henrik and a few mates. They'll sort everything.