The Heart of Darkness

So, for the last few weeks I have been getting up at 4.00am, two or three times a week, to do 5.00 - 7.00am lessons.
The first fifteen minutes are on rural roads, with no lighting, then we get into Elgin (or 'El-jin' as my satnav pronounces it, as though it is a Spanish gin). Town or country, it really is a different world at that time of night/morning. I always have The Specials 'Ghost Town' going round my head when we get to Elgin.
In many ways, the pupil benefits from lessons at this time because the roads are almost empty so we cover more ground. The main disadvantage is that they don't get the same practice dealing with meeting, crossing and emerging.
Now, it could be the headlights in our mirrors, but it seems that vehicles follow much more closely at this time. And there is much more speeding. OK, with empty roads you expect cars/vans to be going faster than usual, but not that fast.
On the other side of my area darkness causes other problems. Deer are a common hazard on the roads but, some roads, such as the A835 between Inverness & Ullapool, can seem full of deer in places. A few years ago I was giving a lesson at night when I saw the reflection of our headlights in a pair of eyes. I covered the brakes, a good thing too, as the deer sprung out into the road. We both went for the brakes and stopped within 2 metres of the animal.
A couple of weeks ago, someone who passed with me last year wasn't so lucky. She came round a corner near Loch Glascarnoch and hit a deer. She is the complete opposite of a boy (or girl) racer, but just got caught out.
Obviously we practiced many emergency stops in our lessons, without problems, but, in a real situation, those quick reactions become vital. I don't know exactly what happened -maybe she doesn't know herself - but sometimes reactions are delayed due to a split-second denial of what is in front of you.
It affected her confidence initially, but she was forced into repeating the journey when a colleague dislocated a shoulder and she had to drive her 60 miles to hospital.
The horror, the horror! (cine-literary joke).